1991 USAC Midget Champ Streicher Passes
Speedway, Indiana (November 6, 2019)………Mike Streicher, the 1991 USAC National Midget driving champion, passed away Wednesday morning, November 6 from a heart attack. He was 62 years old.
Streicher was a success in nearly all facets of midget racing. The Findlay, Ohio native captured USAC National Midget championships on both the driver and team side as a mechanic and car builder.
In 1983, Streicher, with his father Jim, captured their first USAC National Midget owner title as mechanic for driver Rich Vogler. In 1988, at Indiana’s Kokomo Speedway, Mike won the first of his seven (six points-paying) career USAC National Midget features.
Mike was victorious once again in 1989 in home state of Ohio at Barberton Speedway in Norton, Ohio, winding up 4th in the final standings. He then scored three more wins in 1990 with a major victory at the Hoosier Dome Invitational in Indianapolis, Ind., at Indiana’s Lawrenceburg Speedway and Kentucky’s Florence Speedway, finishing 3rd in the series’ driver points while the team notched its second owner title.
The following season, in 1991, Streicher had his breakout year, racing to victory at Kentucky’s Richmond Raceway en route to the USAC National Midget driving title and the family’s third owner championship. By doing so, he remains the most recent USAC National champion from the state of Ohio.
He won once more in 1992, fittingly, in the Buckeye state at Portsmouth Raceway Park.
Mike constructed the Hawk Chassis, which raced to countless Midget feature wins in USAC, NAMARS, ARCA, NEMA, ARDC, and other series. Streicher also served as a professor at University of Northwestern Ohio’s motorsports program to educate future racers and mechanics and was instrumental in the development of the USAC .25 Midget program.
Mike Streicher in a promotion photo shoot prior to the 1991 Hoosier Dome Invitational Midget race in Indianapolis, Ind.
(John Mahoney Photo)