mostly stock configuration cars and ban the pure race cars being imported from Europe. The stock car style rules continued until 1916, when the Contest Board relaxed the rules allowing purpose built machines back into competition ahead of its next officially recognized championship season in 1916. Although AAA did not award national champions during 1906 through 1915, the American automobile journal Motor Age published who they regarded the most outstanding American driver during the years of 1909–1915. These picks have become de facto national champions of the day. During World War I, AAA suspended the national championship and almost stopped sanctioning races as a whole. This time also saw the demise of the American Grand Prize and the ACA totally folded during the war. American manufacturers saw the absence of European racers, and the relaxed rules due to no national level sanctioning as a chance for the U.S. to catch up to the European racers who had dominated racing internationally up until that point. The Contest Board picked up the pieces and regularly held national championships from 1920 until the outbreak of World War II in 1941. After World War I, the race car specifications for the national championship were mostly aligned with what the Indianapolis Motor Speedway wanted to run during its Memorial Day classic, and this still holds mostly true today. AAA, again, restarted the championship with the close of the war for the 1946 season and continued uninterrupted through 1955. After that season, AAA completely pulled out of auto racing, citing the Le Mans disaster and the death of Bill Vukovich at Indianapolis as contributing factors. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway and other Midwestern promoters formed a "Temporary Emergency Committee," later known as the United States Auto Club, to replace the AAA. At the international level, the Automobile Competition Committee of the United States replaced the AAA Contest Board as the national sporting authority per FIA. During the last half of the Racing Boards existence they sanctioned many forms of racing such as midgets, sprint cars, sports cars and stock cars as well as top level championship car racing. National Championship results Contemporary publication selections Controversy Between the years of 1902 and 1919, although AAA sanctioned many races, an official national championship was only awarded in 1905 and 1916. On two separate occasions, Contest Board record keepers changed the results of certain seasons, and calculated retrospective national championships