I need a Riverside International Raceway History Lesson

Alright, I'm gonna post what I know about the track, and if you have any contributions, feel free to post them. Here goes:

--Road course was built in '57 and ran until '88

--Oval was built in '60 and ran until '66

--Drag Strip was built in '59 and ran until '70....then re-opened in '83 and ran until '88

--Drag strip was built on the road course straightaway

--SCTA held 1/2 mile drags at Riverside in the '60s

--Hot Rod Magazine held its drag events there in the '60s

And that's pretty much all I know. I'd love to learn more about the drag strip, but I've yet to find any detailed history on it, like the ones you can easily find for Lions, OCIR, etc. Any help is appreciated!

 

It hosted one Formula One race when it first opened. I think Sterling Moss won it.
There was an oval track too, incorporating Turn Nine.
Also SCORE-Mickey Thompson Of Road races
Indianapolis cars ran fairly often there, also.
There were three courses, the short course, long course and one for stock cars.
The NASCAR season used to open at Riverside in January, while Daytona 500 is always held in Feb. The stockers would come back again in June.
They eventually shortened the 500 mile NASCAR race to 500 km.

Get a copy of Dick Wallens book...."Riverside, the Palace of Speed"
It's the "Bible" for every Riverside event.
Check Ebay.

 

Thank you very much, I'll see if I can grab a copy of that book.

 

Any chance you are confusing Riverside with another track, maybe Ontario? Although NASCAR did run on the road coarse at Riverside, I don't believe there was ever an oval of any size. Maybe they drag raced on one of the straights, but I never heard of that either.

Sometime between 1960 1964 I attended enduro Go-Kart races run on the road coarse. A racer friend told me that in the '60s a three engine Go-Kart ran a faster lap at Riverside than the Shelby Cobras were running at the time.

 

C.R.A. ran races on an oval that incorporated turn nine and a stretch that connected the back straight into the back side of the pits. As Mazooma1 stated the 1960 U.S.G.P. Formula One race was held there in Nov. 1960 and yes Stirling Moss won. At the end of the race they opened up the gates around the track and let spectators drive on the course around to the pits where we all got out and walked around the drivers. Imagine that today. The drag strip raced from what would be the entrance of turn nine back towards turn eight. On Memorial weekend 1958 they had three 500 mile races. On Friday (May 30) C.R.A. ran a sprint car show, although some cars including the winner were Champ Cars. They ran backwards (counter clockwise) around the "stock car course" eliminating turn 7 and going from turn 8 to turn 6. I was at that event an remember it like yesterday. Bud Rose won in the ex Don Lee KK2000, at that time owned by Joe Gemsa. On Saturday they ran midgets for 500 miles also backwards around the same course configuration I was not at this race on Sat. but I think Herk sat on the pole and he and Parnelli both led during the day, Allen Heath was the winner in a KK V-8 60. On Sunday they ran Nascar stock cars for 500 miles I think they ran clockwise on the Stock car course. Parnelli sat on the pole and led most of the race but crashed late, I think Eddie Grey won the race. All three of these races ran 500 miles and took very close to or over 6 hours.

 

Didnt Riverside Dragstrip shutdown in 70 and thats when Ontario took over straight-line racing?

 

Here's some Riverside Raceway trivia:
The tall two-floor control tower that was used for road course events was originally the control tower at Los Angeles International Airport. Urban legend has it that when contractors were demanding big bucks to demolish it for the airport, that Les Richter (President of RIR) stepped up and said that he would pay a dollar for it and haul it off. It was originally located on the outside of the track across from the pits, then moved up to the outside of the esses when the new suites were built across from the pits.

 

Here's a few behind the wheel lessons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zakPard0iKI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXlFHYun3co&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKEwWdIT-Ms

 

The SCTA ran 1/2 mile drags on the back straight. HRM ran a big meet there in '64. The last drag race was in the mid 80s.

A few shots from the HRM '64 meet.
Connie Kalitta.

By weslake at 2011-11-21

Weekly, Rivero, Fox and Holding. Their new car after the high back.


By weslake at 2011-11-21

Tony Nancy's Wedge.
By weslake at 2011-11-21

 

I got your oval right here.







You see in this photo that the straight went directly into Turn 9.

The "kink" was put in to slow the cars down from entering "9" too fast in 1969, but it's at the "kink" that was also the location for three of the fatal accidents:
1. Rolf Stommelen driving a Porsche 935 in 1983.
2. stock car driver Sonny Easley driving a Camaro crashed into trailers in the infield
3. Ken Miles in a testing accident driving a Ford "J-car" in 1966.

and, no, there were no drag races into the 1980's...only sand drags

The last drag race was March, 1969:

Top Fuel: Larry Dixon Sr., 7.23 @ 205 MPH

Top Gas : Jack Jones, 7.61 @ 196 MPH
By the way, Jack was also the "model" for the "Wally Trophy" handed out still today by the NHRA

Funny Car: Charlie Allen, 7.59 @ 194 MPH

Low ET, Steve Carbone, 6.80
Top Speed, John Mulligan, 233 MPH

 

uh....
we ran our asphalt drag car there in the 80's
and i rode my cousin's scooter around the high bank. that was pretty awesome!

 

I would add that the first performance driving school in the country was opened by Carroll Shelby at Riverside when he stopped driving himself.

I was there inside turn 5 when Rolf Stommelen crashed into the kink entering 9. That was a 6 hour enduro race. Bad deal.

 

there's no records of any drag racing....was it a local group?
No NHRA event on record that I can find.

The "high bank" at Turn 9?
How steep was it, anyways, I never got to walk it?
20-25 degrees?

 

yeah, it was the SCEDA group. i seem to remember we were there for the last event before they tore the place down. that day a guy was experimenting with an injected nitro dragster and he blew it up so bad it split the block in half. the concussion was so big that we felt it from the pits. he got out of the car took three wobbly steps and fell flat on his can.

yeah turn nine. i dont know how steep it was but it was something else. i still remember the feeling of looking down the bank to the infield. it was like riding around the inside of a giant swimming pool or something. crazy.

 

http://www.dogfightmag.com/forum/sh...ictures-Ontario-Riverside&highlight=Riverside

Here is some stuff from the Dogfight site.

 

They ran drags into the 80s. Wasn't NHRA. I don't remember who was the organizer. But I do remember a car that ran under the name "Disco Sucks" and at the last meet they had a Fuel Altered that really struggle to make a straight run.

 

When they were getting ready to close it down, SCORE and Mickey Thompson ran the "Last Off Road World Championships" and it was a pretty big deal as a legend was closing - I raced it All three "Last" years LOL

I was also there when Lyn St. James flipped the IMSA GTP Mustang going into turn 1. Came off of turn 9 at very high speed and the damn thing just took off like a sail. SCARY looking wreck.
Used to love watching NASCAR come and runt here in the 60's and 70's. Richard Petty would just say screw the esses and run straight with to wheels in the dirt. Local Boy's Herschel McGriff and Jack Baldwin used to show the Southern Boys the fast way around Riverslide.

There is a Riverside International Raceway museum now too. I think they have a Face Book page.

 

The L.A Times Grand Prix was held at Riverside in '61...Stirling Moss and, if I remember correctly, Jack Brabham, were there in matching Lotuses, but they both broke early...the winner was Billy Krause in a birdcage Maserati, but the runner-up was Max Balchosky (sp??) in Old Yeller, Buick powered, looked crude, but ran all day with the big boys...after the race, while other racers were putting their race cars on trailers, Max fired up old Yeller and drove over to the trophy presentation at the Mission Inn in Riverside...

 

I use to go watch the Can Am and IROC series run through Riverside all the time as a kid. I grew up in Norco. Those were the days when there was nothing out there but dirt but I have a lot of good memories from those times.

 

Hell yeah on Parnelli in his bronco's. A friend was building and pitting for him back then, I think they later got tied in with Bill Stroppe and James Garner.

 

Little known factoid...Stirling Moss' father Alfred ran the Indy 500 once and finished 14th...and yes, beg, borrow, steal Dick Wallen's books...they are all tomes of motorsports history that people will be referring to hundreds of years from now.

 

SCTA 1/2 mile, Riverside, 1963. Aproaching the bridge at a bit over 140.

 

Hot Rod magazine Championship drags, Riverside 1/4 mile, 1966, on the way to winning street eliminator.

 

HRM Championship races again, 1965.

 

SCTA 1/2 mile, Riverside, 1961, staging line in turn 9 approaching the starting line.

 

I remember a matchrace between Garlits and "The Greek" for $1000 of Isky's cam war chest money. Had to been '60-'61. Garlits had been runninng some unreal times back East and most believed they were "Popcorn". As I recall Art Malone was driving for Garlits as he'd been burned pretty bad, "Greek" didn't show and the So-Cal crowd was very unfriendly ,booing,name calling and all. After a big time single pas by Malone, Garlits gave everyone on the rail the "One Fingered Salute" on the push back down !!He proceded over to Isky ,collected the grand and the rest is history.

 

Hey, Dean Lowe and Mazooma1, Thanks for the way cool pix!
My first time to RIR was around 73 or so to watch Petty wring out that Superbird around the track.
After I went to work for Riverside P.D. in the early 80's, I did some SRA (Southland Racing Assoc) races with motorcycles and 4Trax 250R's just before they tore the whole thing down to build the Moreno Valley Mall. I can't help but remember going back to the past when I went from a dirt infield section to a banked asphalt turn and remembering the famous racers who went before me. Even then, the nostalgia was kickin' in... Of course, it didn't do much for my lap times though...

 

Damn Dean, you had all the fun.

Got enough laundry there?
Must have 16 ft of cargo chute shoved in that bag.

 

Here is a link to some old road race slides from Riverside, I posted a couple of years back....

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=287754

 

There was a n oval at Riverside Raceway. My boss (I was the mechanic) ran the place nuts with his 53 Hudson Twin Hornet. The V-8's would pull up on him in the straight a way and he run from them in the turns. We ran there at least until 1968 or maybe 70.
Normbc9