We’re forgetting who said it at the moment but there was once a reference made about racing at Bristol that equated the experience to attempting the flight of a fighter jet inside a living room. To scale, the Rumble In Ft. Wayne seems a lot like the same thing. 600cc non-winged midgets racing inside a small area on a very short flat track make for one heck of a show. It also makes for one heck of a slim margin for error as a few of the drivers in the videos below discovered. The very light and potent cars are open wheeled and racing in amazingly tight quarters. Because of that, the risk for contact between wheels is very high and it seems that every incident below was caused by that. Not really a surprise because it is the root of most open wheel crashes but it still bears noting.

While most of the country thinks of the winter time of the year being dedicated to working in the garage, hitting the indoor car shows of your area, or maybe taking in one of the ice-speedway style motorcycle races, you should be on the lookout for this stuff too. Cars like these run in virtually every part of the country where it is cold. From New England right across. If you live in Indiana, you can likely watch this stuff somewhere multiple times a week if we had to guess.

600cc engines, short wheelbases, drivers chomping at the bit for seat time, and courses that are seemingly shorter than skating rinks. On paper it doesn’t sound like much but as you will see below, in practice it is intense, fast, and complete with all the potential chills of the full bore cars.

The final video is pretty serious. One of the cars crashed in such a way that paramedics who were working the race got hurt by pieces or contact or some hybrid of the two. Details are few in that final video but it does mention a paramedic having to be hospitalized. We’re sure hoping that they come out of this OK.

Check out the videos below –