Question: Knoxville Raceway is an example of what type of racing that began before World War I?

Context articles: Santa Pod Raceway
Knoxville Nationals
2007 Speed World Challenge
Type R ship
Nambu pistol
Dirt track racing
1987 Australian Touring Car Championship
Famoso Raceway
Drag boat racing
Knoxville Raceway

Santa Pod Raceway, located in Podington, Bedfordshire, England, is Europe's first permanent drag racing venue.
 It was built on a disused Second World War air base, (RAF Podington), once used by the 92nd Bomber Group.
 The drag racing venue opened at Easter in 1966, and it is now the home of European drag racing and has grown substantially over its 51-year existence.
 It hosts both the first and last round of the FIA and FIM/UEM European Drag Racing Championship, along with the British National Drag Racing Championships.
The 5-Hour Energy Knoxville Nationals is an annual sprint car event held at Knoxville Raceway in Knoxville, Iowa.
 An Associated Press writer called winning the event "sprint car racing’s premiere title".
 It is nicknamed "The Granddaddy of Them All."
 The event is the biggest and most prestigious race of the year in sprint car racing.
 The Saturday finale is held on the second Saturday in August.
 The event is held for four days (Wednesday-Saturday) and is attended annually by approximately 25,000 fans.
 The event has the highest paying purse in sprint car racing at $1,000,000 which attracts roughly 100 race teams to compete.
The 2007 Speed World Challenge season was the eighteenth season of the SCCA Pro Racing Speed World Challenge.
 It began on March 16 at Sebring International Raceway and ended October 21 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
The Type R ship is a United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) designation for World War II refrigerated cargo ship, also called a reefer ship.
 The R type ship was used in World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War and the Cold War.
 Type R ships were used to transport perishable commodities which require temperature-controlled transportation, such as fruit, meat, fish, vegetables, dairy products and other foods.
 The US Maritime Commission ordered 41 new refrigerated ships for the US Navy.
 Because of the difficulty of building refrigerated ships only two were delivered in 1944, and just 26 were delivered in 1945 and the remainder in 1946–48.
 The 41 R type ships were built in four groups.
 Two of design types were modified type C1 ships and two were modified type C2 ships.
 The United Fruit Company operated many of the R type ships in World War 2.
 The type R2-S-BV1 became the US Navy Alstede-class stores ship and the type R1-M-AV3 became the US Navy Adria-class stores ship.
The Nambu pistols (南部拳銃 or 南部大型自動拳銃 , Nanbu kenjuu or Nanbu ōgata jidou-kenjuu ) were a series of semi-automatic pistols produced by the Japanese company Koishikawa Arsenal later known as the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal.
 The series had five variants, the Type A Model 1902 (also called the Grandpa Nambu), the Type A Model 1902 Modified (also known as the Papa Nambu), the Type B (also known as the Baby Nambu), the Type 14 (南部十四年式自動拳銃) and the Type 94.
 The pistols were designed by Kijiro Nambu and saw extensive service during the Russo-Japanese War, Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
 The Type A was made in very small numbers.
 Type A Modified and Type B Nambus were never formally adopted by any branch of the armed forces of Imperial Japan but were sold to officers through officer stores.
 The Type 14 was adopted as an official sidearm.
 As World War II progressed, and particularly in the final year of the war, in order to speed production, Type 14s began to be more hastily manufactured with a subsequent decline in quality.
Dirt track racing is a type of auto racing performed on clay or dirt surfaced oval tracks.
 It began in the United States before World War I and became widespread during the 1920s and 1930s.
 Two different types of race cars dominated—open wheel racers in the Northeast and West and stock cars in the South.
 While open wheel race cars are purpose-built racing vehicles, stock cars (also known as fendered cars) can be either purpose-built race cars or street vehicles that have been modified to varying degrees.
The 1987 Australian Touring Car Championship was a motor racing competition which was open to Touring Cars complying with regulations as defined by CAMS and based on FIA Group A rules.
 The championship, which was the 28th Australian Touring Car Championship, began on 1 March 1987 at Calder Park Raceway and ended on 5 July at Oran Park Raceway after nine rounds.
 The Calder round saw the world debut of the racing versions of the BMW M3, the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth and the Alfa Romeo 75 Turbo.
The Famoso Raceway dragstrip is located north of Bakersfield, California, and is known historically as the home to the annual March Meet, also known as the U.S. Fuel and Gas Championships.
 The strip, located on Famoso Road between Highway 99 and Highway 65 east of the Highway 99 and Highway 46 interchange, was originally built in World War II as an auxiliary training base for the nearby Army Air Corps training base at Shafter's Minter Field.
 After World War II, the Army abandoned the field.
 It was in the 1950s that an aspiring group of drag racing pioneers from the Bakersfield area, the Bakersfield Smokers, purchased the strip and made the necessary adjustments to allow for drag racing.
 The Famoso Raceway hosted the first ever March Meet in 1959 and it helped establish the fledgling National Hot Rod Association's (NHRA) legitimacy.
Drag boat racing is a form of drag racing which takes place on water rather than land.
 As with land-based drag racing, competitors race their vehicles for the lowest elapsed time (low ET) over a straight race course of a defined length.
 There are three standard drag race course lengths, 660 feet (1/8 mile), 1,320 foot (1/4 mile), and the most common length, used in professional drag boat racing, 1,000 feet (3/16 mile plus 10 feet).
 Unlike drag racing on land, which begins from a standing start, drag boat racing begins from a short rolling start to a point that cannot be passed until the green "start" light illuminates.
 There are numerous categories of professional and sportsmen classes based on various engine configuration, fuel type, hull design and propulsion types.
 The premier category of drag boat racing being the Top Fuel Hydroplane class which is the water based equivalent to Top Fuel Dragsters capable of covering the liquid quarter mile in less than four seconds with a top speed of around 260 mph (400 km/h).
 The biggest event on the drag boat calendar is the LODBRS World Finals which takes place at Firebird Raceway Phoenix, Arizona.
Knoxville Raceway is a semi-banked 1/2 mile dirt oval raceway (zook clay) located at the Marion County Fairgrounds in Knoxville, Iowa, United States.
 Races at the "Sprint Car Capital of the World" are held on Saturday nights from April through September each year.
 Some special events may start as early as Wednesday and build up to Saturday.
 Regular events include 305 cubic inch, 360 cubic inch and 410 cubic inch sprint car racing.
 Each August, the Raceway holds the paramount sprint car event in the United States, the Knoxville Nationals.
 The track is governed by the 24-member fair board elected by Marion County residents.