The first organized midget car race took place on June 4, 1933, with regular weekly racing beginning on August 10, 1933, at Loyola High School Stadium in Los Angeles under the Midget Auto Racing Association (MARA), the first official governing body for the sport. From California, midget racing spread rapidly across the United States and then internationally. Australia hosted its first midget event on December 15, 1934, at Melbourne's Olympic Park, and New Zealand followed in 1937. By August 1937, midget cars were racing on dirt at Hastings Park in Vancouver, Canada.
Early venues included board tracks previously used for bicycle racing. The construction of the purpose-built Gilmore Stadium accelerated the growth of permanent midget venues, and hundreds of tracks opened across the United States over the following decade. The AAA Contest Board sanctioned midget races until 1955, when it withdrew from motorsport entirely, after which the United States Auto Club (USAC) became the primary sanctioning body for American midget racing. NASCAR briefly operated a midget division from 1952 to 1968.
In Australia, the sport flourished through the 1950s and 1960s as a golden era drew crowds of up to 30,000 at the Sydney Showground Speedway and over 10,000 in Adelaide and Brisbane. American drivers were regularly imported for high-profile events, and promoters staged races billed as the World Speedcar Championship.
Midget cars are compact, lightweight machines built for oval track racing. Typical specifications include four-cylinder engines producing between 300 and 400 horsepower in a car weighing approximately 900 pounds (410 kg), yielding an extremely high power-to-weight ratio. That ratio makes midget racing genuinely dangerous, which is why modern cars are fully equipped with roll cages and extensive safety infrastructure. Midgets are designed for relatively short distances, usually races covering 2.5 to 25 miles. Some events, notably the Chili Bowl, are held indoors in arena settings. Both dirt track and paved asphalt variants of the sport exist.
Related variants include three-quarter midgets, which developed from smaller midget midget cars of the late 1940s, and quarter midgets, which are one-quarter the size of a standard car and serve as an entry-level competition class.
Midget car racing has long served as an intermediate proving ground for drivers ascending toward major professional series. Significant names who used midgets as a developmental step include Tony Stewart, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Kyle Larson, Jeff Gordon, Christopher Bell, Rodger Ward, Bill Vukovich, Ryan Newman, Sarah Fisher, and Johnnie Parsons. Australia's three-time Formula One World Drivers' Champion Jack Brabham began his motor racing career in Speedcars on Sydney dirt ovals in the late 1940s, winning multiple national and state titles before transitioning to road racing in 1953. Events are sometimes scheduled on weeknights specifically so drivers competing in higher-profile series can participate without missing their primary commitments.
The Chili Bowl Nationals, held in early January at the Tulsa Expo Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is the most prestigious indoor midget event in the world. Other landmark events include the Turkey Night Grand Prix, the Hut Hundred at Terre Haute Action Track, and various state and national championships in Australia and New Zealand. The World 50-lap Classic at Western Springs Stadium in Auckland is the premier New Zealand event.
In 1959, a notable cross-discipline moment occurred at Lime Rock Park when Rodger Ward, driving an Offenhauser-powered midget normally used on oval tracks, defeated a field of expensive sports cars in a Formula Libre road course race by exploiting the car's power-to-weight advantage and dirt-track cornering techniques.
In the United States, USAC's National Midget Series and the POWRi Midget Series are the two leading national sanctioning bodies. Regional bodies include the Badger Midget Auto Racing Association (BMARA), the oldest in the country, along with the Northeastern Midget Association (NEMA), the American Racing Drivers Club (ARDC), and numerous state-level organizations. In Australia, the sport is governed by Speedcars Australia and various state associations. In New Zealand, Speedway New Zealand oversees the category. Argentina has its own organized midget community based primarily around Bahia Blanca.