The legend of Leadfoot and Two Guns lives on

Western Springs' favourite racers, Midget cars warm up before attacking the quarter-mile oval. Photo / Greg Bowker

For 12 nights each summer, high drama unfolds in a stadium that relief workers carved out of a natural amphitheatre at the start of the Great Depression.

Speedway, in one form or another, has run at Western Springs on the fringe of Grey Lynn since the end of 1929.

Generations of families have trekked there for a night of non-stop entertainment and some of the most exciting motor racing you'll see anywhere.

There are petrolheads among them, but the Springs' appeal is wider than that: it's a great night out with exciting action that even people with the most slender interest in motorsport can enjoy.

In the mid-20th century, dirt-track oval speedways were dotted across Auckland, but today only the Springs and Waikaraka Park survive - saloons and stock cars at Waikaraka, open-wheeled Midgets, TQs and Sprint Cars at Western Springs.

A third oval at Rosebank Rd alongside the Northwestern Motorway hosts speedway motorbikes and historic Midgets and TQs.

In recent years, Western Springs has weathered political storms.

Neighbouring residents and factions on the then-Auckland City Council sought to close it down, arguing it was noisy, intrusive and no longer appropriate in the inner city.

Aucklanders rallied in protest and the speedway is still running - on a limited schedule and to strictly-enforced noise levels and curfew time.

The place has a lot of history. The world's first international Midget Car race meeting ran there on Christmas Day 1937, when the American open-wheelers debuted in a showdown among US, New Zealand and Australian drivers.

It was the start of a tradition that sees America's best Midget Car racers line up against NZ's top guns at Western Springs each summer.

World War II interrupted the annual clash but in the early 1960s it was back on again, with Lowell (Leadfoot) Sachs making the trip down from the States in 1962.

He was followed by the flamboyant Bob (Two Gun) Tattersall whose spectacular driving wowed local crowds.

Equally a crowd-pleaser was a later American star of the Springs, Ron (Sleepy) Tripp. Sleepy got his nickname because when he was starting racing as a kid, he'd often fall asleep in his Quarter Midget racer as he sat on the dummy grid waiting for his race to start.

There was nothing vaguely sleepy about his racing.

Other American aces who raced there have included Stan Fox, Mel Kenyon - regarded by many as the best Midget racer ever - and motorsport legend AJ Foyt, who won four Indianapolis 500s. Nascar superstar Jeff Gordon raced a Sprint Car at the Springs early in his career.

But Americans have never found racing there a cakewalk, for the demanding quarter-mile has developed dozens of talented Kiwi racers.

Springs stalwart Frank (Satan) Brewer became New Zealand's first professional racing driver, taking on and beating the Yanks and Aussies on their home grounds.

Locals like Roly Crowther, Ross Goonan, John Stanley, Trevor Morris, Merv Neil, Ian Holden, Barry Butterworth and Ted Tracey could win against any opposition and developed fiercely loyal fan bases.

In more recent times Graham Standring has underlined his world class by racking up 50 feature race wins and Michael Pickens and Brad Mosen continue the tradition of Kiwi excellence at short oval racing.

Racing at the Springs is all about no-quarter cut-and-thrust: it happens in all categories - Sprint Cars, TQ Midgets and Midgets - but the place seems to suit the Midgets best.

A hard-fought 25-lap Western Springs Midget Car feature is one of the best motor races you'll ever see: and there'll be maybe as many as 10 of them in the 12-meeting season.

When the racing is like that, an electric buzz infects the crowd.

It can even put a spring into the step of departing punters making the muscle-straining climb up the daunting hill to the Old Mill Rd stadium gate as 1960s British pop diva Helen Shapiro belts out Walking Back to Happiness, the speedway's meeting-closing theme song since track announcer Bill Mudgway's heyday.

Western Springs speedway is as much part of what makes Auckland unique as are the Harbour Bridge or the Sky Tower.