05/16/2026
Mike Nazaruk was an American racecar driver. He raced midget cars, sprint cars, and IndyCars. In August, 1953 he experience one of the most dramatic chapters in automobile racing history.
Mike Nazaruk’s story took a determined turn at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St. Paul. Racing down the backstretch in third place, he was trying to pass Bob Sweikert for a second place finish when, Nazaruk was caught in complete disaster. The steering linkage on Jimmy Elkins’ car failed and Elkins’ car slammed into Nazaruk’s, sending Nazaruk’s car flipping end over end before it began to barrel-roll down the track. The safety belts broke, the hood, fenders and engine parts started to come apart, and debris flew in every direction. With his left foot wedged beneath the brake pedal, Nazaruk was dragged and battered along the track for more than a hundred feet.
Rescuers rushed to the scene and found Mike unconscious. As they doused the wreckage with fire retardant, first-aid responders ran in with a stretcher and Nazaruk was taken to the nearest hospital with devastating injuries. The skin on his back had been torn away from his shoulder blades to the middle of his thighs. It was a horrific wound, but he survived—and from it earned the nickname “Iron Mike.”
Later that evening, when he regained consciousness, the doctor told him he was fortunate to be alive and should be ready for discharge in several days. But Nazaruk had other plans. “Can’t do that, Doc—I’m under contract, and I still have races to run.” And as soon as the doctor left the room, he got dressed, walked out of the hospital, and hailed a cab back to the fairgrounds, where he had left his personal car.
Alone, he somehow drove 497 miles back to Indianapolis, rested for a day, and covered his wounds with what he later described as U.S. Marine burn grease. He then drove to Cincinnati and won a 100-lap AAA midget-car race, despite being soaked in his own blood before the end of the race. That same night, still alone, he drove to Detroit and finished second in a 50-lap midget race the next day.
Nazaruk participated in three World Championship races. He finished second once (formally "on the podium") and accumulated a total of eight World Championship points.
Nazaruk's fearless style of driving eventually caught up with him and he was killed in a sprint car race at Langhorne Speedway on May 1, 1955 at 33 years of age.
Although suffering from the flu, he went against the advice of his wife and friends and drove several heats at the Langhorn track. He was leading, after having won the third preliminary race that day when his sprint car suddenly veered into the outside wall, swerved out of control for 200 yards, and hit the fence again where it went through, then barrel-rolled multiple times off the speedway into a grassy field 200 yards outside the wall and caught fire. Nazaruk was thrown out of the car and landed many yards from the crash site with his helmet torn off. He died of neck injuries.
The Dean of American Motorsports Journalism, Chris Economaki once said, "Mike Nazaruk had been through Iwo Jima in the US Marine Corp, the only man from his platoon to return from an island held by 20,000 Japanese, so nothing after that was going to frighten him much...".
