Riverside International Raceway
Riverside International Raceway was a
race track or road course in
Riverside, California. A driver died during the first weekend after the opening and several more drivers perished while the track was in operation from 1957 to 1989.
The track was built to accommodate several different
races. By closing off certain sections of the track, the route drivers had to follow could be altered. The three options on the Riverside Raceway were the long course , the short course , and the
NASCAR course. The original racetrack had a 1.1 mile backstretch from 1957 to 1968.
Encyclopedia
| Riverside International Raceway |
|---|
| |
| Opened: September, 1957 |
| Closed: June, 1989 |
|
Riverside International Raceway was a
race track or road course in
Riverside, California. A driver died during the first weekend after the opening and several more drivers perished while the track was in operation from 1957 to 1989.
The track was built to accommodate several different
races. By closing off certain sections of the track, the route drivers had to follow could be altered. The three options on the Riverside Raceway were the long course , the short course , and the
NASCAR course. The original racetrack had a 1.1 mile backstretch from 1957 to 1968. When the track was redesigned in 1969, turn 9 was made wide and a
dogleg was added.
The four courses of Riverside
Before a racing event at RIR, track crews added
traffic pylons to close off sections of the track. Track courses are shown in the illustrations below .
Diagram notes: The long course had the 1.1 mile backstrech. When the 1969 version was built, the dogleg was added as a speed scrubber to reduce speeds when approaching turn 9. The NASCAR course in the middle illustration would not use turn 7. In the short course, the track would use turn
7A rather than 8.
Movies and television
RIR was also a prime spot for movie shoots. Parts of the
television shows
CHiPs was a US [i] television [i] series through MGM Studios running on NBC [i] from September 15 [i] ...
,
Simon and Simon was the name of a detective series starring Gerald McRaney [i] and Jameson Parker [i]....
,
The Rockford Files was an American [i] detective [i] television [i] drama [i] that had ...
,
Knight Rider was a popular American [i] television series [i] that ran between September 26 [i] ...
, and the
HBO program
Super Dave Osborne were shot on location at RIR.
RIR was also a location shooting in the following
movies:
The Love Bug was the first of a series of movies made by Walt Disney Productions [i] that starred a...
,
Roadracers,
Fireball 500,
On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic [i] end-of-the-world novel writt...
,
Speedway,
Stacey, ,
Thunder Alley,
Winning, and
The Killers.
Many advertisements are also shot at RIR.
Miscellaneous facts
Footage exists of classic races like the 1986 Los Angeles Times Grand Prix in which the
Chevy Corvette of Doc Bundy hit the
Ford Probe of Lyn St. James and the
Jaguar of
Chip Robinson at Turn 1. St. James' car caught fire and Chip Robinson nearly cartwheeled into the crowd. Fortunately, St. James survived the flames and Robinson escaped uninjured within the track bounds.
Sadly, Riverside was the site of the only fatality in
IMSA GTP history. In the 1983 Times Grand Prix, Rolf Stommelen's Joest-constructed
Porsche 935 lost its rear wing at the Dogleg and hit two freeway-type barriers sending it into a horrific roll at Turn 9.
When the racetrack was proposed in the mid
1950s, Riverside International Motor Raceway was planned to ultimately be 5.0 miles long, but the club extension was never constructed and the track's final length was 3.3 miles.
Of the entire road course races run at RIR, there was at least one that was run in a counter-clockwise direction sometime in the
1960s.
ESPN taped the June 12, 1988, Budweiser 400 race at RIR and caught racer
Ruben Garcia crashing hard off turn 9.
NASCAR lost racer Joe Weatherly at the track in January 1964. For a final tribute, the old version of Riverside Raceway etched on his headstone as a final joke since Joe was a joker.
After 14 years of NASCAR as a driver and later a car owner,
Richard Childress won his first NASCAR race in 1983, when
Ricky Rudd drove his #3 Piedmont Airlines Chevrolet to victory in the 1983 Budweiser 400k.
From 1981 until 1987, NASCAR's championship race was at Riverside. The
USAC Championship Trail also held their season ending race from 1967 to 1969.
Riverside was home to track announcer Sandy Reed and Roy Hord Jr.
Closure and RIR's transformation into a shopping mall
After former
Los Angeles Rams player Les Richter sold the property to Fritz Duda, 1988 would be the final year of racing for Riverside International Raceway. On June 12, 1988, NASCAR held its final race at RIR - a race won by
Rusty Wallace . In 1989, after the SCORE International held its last race, the track finally closed its gates after 32 years of racing after Cal-Club racer Mark Verbofsky died and the track ended the way it started: with a dead racer. Fritz Duda turned the "House that
Dan Gurney built" into a
shopping mall which opened in 1992. The Moreno Valley Mall at Towngate is on the northern end of the former Raceway Property and houses now occupy the southern end of the old racetrack . In a 1994 topographical map, the remains of Riverside's Turn 9 and a wall were still visible. However, today nothing is left of the Riverside International Raceway except for
memorabilia from the racetrack. The old Administration Building remained until 2005, when it was torn down to make way for a complex of townhomes.
When Riverside closed in 1988, it followed in the footsteps of
Ontario Motor Speedway which closed in 1980.
In 2003, the remainder of the old Riverside International Raceway was torn up, the sign that was at California 60 and Day Street was removed to make way for a
Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse. The old Turn 9 of the old track is now home to houses and the legendary site of the old Riverside International Raceway where you could have heard the roar of engines is now a shopper's heaven and houses.
Ironically, in 2003, plans were announced in northern California, near Merced, to build a 3-mile road course with a similar design to the famed Riverside layout, with a major difference in a chicane and Turn 9 .
Races held at Riverside International Raceway
- The NASCAR Winston Cup Series and Winston West: Motor Trend 500, NASCAR Winston Western 500, and NAPA/Budweiser 400K
- The CART PPG/Indycar World Series : AirCal 500 / L.A. Times 500
- USAC Championship Trail Rex Mays 300
- The Los Angeles Times Grand Prix of Endurance
- The 1960 United States Grand Prix
- 24 hours of Riverside, testing the Chevy Corvair
- IROC
- NHRA drag racing in the mid sixties.
- SCORE International Off Road World Championships, the last one was held in August 1988.
- IMSA and SCCA car races
- Rex Mays 300
References
- Riverside Raceway, Palace Of Speed by Dick Wallen
- Motorsport Memorial entry on Rolf Stommelen , . Retrieved February 1, 2005.
External links
- - Contains videos and books related to Riverside Raceway.
