Riverside will always be my favorite

[Deleted]

But I like Laguna Seca, Road America, Watkins Glen and of course Circuit of the Americas home of the American Grand Prix. COTA.

[dustymojave]

I grew up around Riverside Raceway, Willow Springs, Goleta and a great many other race courses from Holtville to Hanford. El Mirage is visible from this and my previous 3 homes. Where I grew up I could hear San Fernando Drags a couple miles away most every weekend. Whiteman Airpark was a mile and 1/2 further. Saugus Speedway in the next town north 15 miles away where I lived for 10 years. Hopetown/Corriganville across the Valley and Paramount Ranch just a little past where my wife works the past 21 years. Street races just up San Fernando Road from the house. I was an official at the 1st Ontario Speedway event and the 1st race on the Long Beach Grand Prix course. I've spent my adult life involved in offroad racing all over SoCal, Nevada, Arizona and Baja.

Tough to call a favorite out of those. But for a created road race course Riverside was certainly up at the top of my list.

[Deleted]

Wow Dusty you were certainly blessed to have lived near so many tracks. I guess you could say that I was blessed too because at the young age of 19 I was fortunate to be able to go to the race at LeMans and we camped right next to the Dunlop Tire bridge. And then I was privileged to get to go to a tire test in the Black Forest in Austria where the BMW is made, what a thrill that was.

[Art]

Riverside was also a favorite of mine growing up. I really miss the place.

[johnwebster]

Mid-Ohio. Beautiful challenging track in a lovely setting.

I first went there for an SCCA National in 1966 and raced there several times from 76 to 81.

[aurfalien]

Funny thing about Riverside, I lived very near it and was looking forward in gettimg my first car to track there.

When about the time I got the car they closed it down and put in an ugly mall.

I was soo bummed.

[Patrick]

Hands down it has to be Riverside! I went to 2 driver's schools there and loved turn 7-7A the best (I respected the boiler plate last turn, too!!). This is me in my Lotus Mk18 FC on the back straight!

and pulling out onto the track...


Expensive fun even back then in 1972!

Patrick

[dustymojave]

Aug 22, 2015 14:39:50 GMT -8 Patrick said:

Hands down it has to be Riverside! I went to 2 driver's schools there and loved turn 7-7A the best (I respected the boiler plate last turn, too!!). This is me in my Lotus Mk18 FC on the back straight!

and pulling out onto the track...


Expensive fun even back then in 1972!

Patrick

Lotus 18??? Looks much more like a Lotus 61 Formula Ford modified to F/C with a sports car nose and a wing. In 1972 I would have been there at the track when you were doing that. Can't say I remember you or your car, but I was certain to have been there. I did Tech and also any cars which shunted bad enough to get towed in were brought to me for logbook write-up of the incident and damage to the car.

One of my fun memories of Riverside was watching Richard Petty go through the Esses. He had a unique line. He turned right at Turn 2 and basically pointed the car at the entry to turn 6 and whatever happened between seemed just part of the track to him. Many years of racing dirt tracks in the south probably had a big influence on his choice of line.

Of course, local Riverside boy Dan Gurney ruled the track in NASCAR events for many years.

I have a great many memories of the place. Working the NASCAR race as a corner flagman the weekend of my High School graduation comes to mind. That included a pair of race cars tangling and me getting thrown by my flag partner (2 flagman stand facing each other, one faces oncoming traffic and the other faces down track) into a ditch and the racers hit the embankment above us, one went through the chainlink and hit parked spectator cars. Glad the other flagman was a burly guy who could throw me, because it saved my life.

There was a Formula Ford race in 72, IIRC, very warm weather, probably late summer, LOTS of cars on the track (like 50-some took the green flag). As the flag dropped on the swarm, the Marshal in Turn 6 called out over the radio that it was pouring cats and dogs. The sun was shining hot on the start and all the cars had slicks on. They went around Turn 2, hit a "wall of water" and most of the racers went off into the desert. Some over the tops of others and some upside down. As the wreck impounds guy, I was pressed into service on the tow truck and rushed to the scene to find that indeed it was like hitting a wall of water when we got to the cloudburst. And the driver slowed to about 15mph. I was hanging on the back of the tow truck with 3 other guys, followed by the fire emergency truck and the 2 ambulances in pouring rain and the track already had 2 to 6 inches of water on the surface while the start line still had sunshine. What a MESS!!! Few of the racers got back to the pit undamaged.

Times Grand Prixs were always extra special to me as they were scheduled right around my birthday, along with involving the baddest fendered cars on the planet, and the world's best race drivers, plus it was the biggest road race event in North America. I have a picture I took on the 72 grid of Mark Donohue's left front Goodyear race tire on his Penske Porsche 917-10K which had the lettering mis-molded to read "GODYEAR".

While Riverside's location in the arid semi-desert of SoCal precluded any lush and pretty landscaping, which I often heard folks from other parts of the planet bemoan, it did make for little to run into around the track and lots of run-off area as well as allowing spectators the ability to see a great deal of the track from a given location an drivers to see well ahead other than at a few blind corners. 1, 2, 6, and 7 would keep ya guessing what is ahead, even though in most of those places, you could see other parts of the course.

But the track's country road-like layout with a wide variety of corners and straights, and its flow, combined with the 3-dimensional aspect of elevation changes made it a fun track. To this day, I have a great distaste for tracks laid out on a pancake griddle like Buttonwillow.

Some bad memories linger as well. Doctor White's GT40 crash at the entrance to Turn 9, Doc Sturm's crash of his TR3 near Turn 2, and Doc Bill Molle's crash of his Lotus 23 into the old pit wall on the outside of the front straight are all fatal crashes I wish had not happened. (I can't really classify Doc Molle's as a fatal crash, as the car veered into the wall after he died of a heart attack. Doctor Pennington verified that his heart had stopped before contact. - There was NO bruising.) Of course, Ken Miles tragic loss in the Ford GT J car was terrible. Although I wasn't there to watch that happen as I was the others listed. But to be fair, there were probably more spectator deaths due to heart attack and stroke during events than the total of race drivers deaths in crashes on the track. It was probably a relatively very safe facility.