Riverside International Raceway
Riverside International Raceway was a motorsports race track and road course established in the Edgemont area of Riverside County, California, just east of the city limits of Riverside and east of Los Angeles, in 1957. In 1984, the raceway became part of the newly incorporated city of Moreno Valley. Riverside was noted for its hot, dusty environment, which was a dangerous challenge for drivers. It was also considered one of the finest tracks in the United States. The track was in operation from September 22, 1957, to July 2, 1989, with the last race, The Budweiser 400, won by Rusty Wallace, held in 1988. After that final race, a shortened version of the circuit was kept open for car clubs and special events until 1989.
History
The racetrack was originally called The Riverside International Motor Raceway, and it was built in early 1957 by a company called West Coast Automotive Testing Corp. The head of West Coast Auto Testing was a retired race driver named Rudy Cleye, from Los Angeles, who had previously raced in Europe. However, the building of the raceway was met with funding difficulties early on and businessman John Edgar provided a much needed cash investment. This late investment prevented any halt in the track's construction.During the first weekend of scheduled races in September 1957, a California Sports Car Club event, John Lawrence of Pasadena, California, died. Lawrence, a former Cal Club member, piloting a 1500 cc Production champion, went off between Turns 5 and 6. With no crash barrier in place, and no rollbar on the car, Lawrence's MGA went up the sand embankment, then rolled back onto the track. Though Lawrence survived the incident, and appeared only slightly injured, he died later at the hospital of a brain injury.
The second major event at the track, in November 1957, was a sports car race featuring some of the top drivers of the day, including Carroll Shelby, Masten Gregory and Ken Miles. Another driver entered was an inexperienced local youngster named Dan Gurney, who had been offered the opportunity to drive a powerful but ill-handling 4.9-liter Ferrari after better-known drivers such as Shelby and Miles had rejected it. Shelby led early but spun and fell back. Gurney assumed the lead and led for much of the event. Shelby, driving furiously to catch up, finally overtook Gurney late in the race and won. Gurney's performance caught the eye of North American Ferrari importer Luigi Chinetti, who arranged for Gurney to drive a factory-supported Ferrari at Le Mans in 1958, effectively launching the Californian's European career.
Footage exists of classic races like the 1986 Los Angeles Times Grand Prix in which the Chevy Corvette of Doc Bundy, attempting a three-wide pass going into turn 1, hit the Ford Probe of Lyn St. James and the Jaguar of Chip Robinson. St. James' car caught fire and Robinson nearly cartwheeled into the crowd. St. James survived the flames and Robinson escaped uninjured within the track bounds.
The track was known as a relatively dangerous course, with its long, downhill back straightaway and brake-destroying, relatively slow 180-degree Turn 9 at the end. During the 1965 Motor Trend 500 NASCAR race, IndyCar great A. J. Foyt suffered a brake failure at the end of the straight, shot off the road and went end-over-end through the infield at high speed. Crash crews assumed Foyt was dead at the scene, until fellow driver Parnelli Jones noticed a twitch of movement. Ford factory sports car driver Ken Miles was killed there in a testing accident in August 1966 when his Ford sports car prototype became aerodynamically unstable and flew out of control at the end of the back straight. In December 1968, American Formula 5000 champion crashed and overturned in Turn 9 on the first lap of the Rex Mays 300 Indianapolis-style race, suffering near-fatal burns. In January 1967, Canadian driver Billy Foster crashed at Turn 9 during a practice-session just prior to the start of qualifying for the Motor Trend 500 NASCAR race, his head striking the wall and causing fatal injuries. These accidents and others caused track management to reconfigure Turn 9, giving the turn a dogleg approach and a much wider radius.
In January 1964, Riverside also claimed the life of 1962–'63 NASCAR champion Joe Weatherly, who refused to wear a shoulder harness and wore his lap belt loosely. Weatherly died when he lost control entering Turn 6, hitting the steel barrier almost broadside and had his head snapped out the window against the barrier.
Nevertheless, in 1983 Turn 9 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.
Of the entire road course races run at RIR, there was one that was run in a counter-clockwise direction, sometime around 1960. In 1966 Dan Gurney tested his first Eagle racing car on a shorter, counter-clockwise version of the track tailored specifically for his car's Indianapolis-specific left-turn oiling system. The test caused Gurney to ask track president Les Richter to hold an Indianapolis-style race there. From 1967 to 1969 the Rex Mays 300 served as the season-ending USAC Indianapolis-car race.
ESPN was live for the June 12, 1988, Budweiser 400 race at RIR and caught racer Ruben Garcia crashing hard off turn 9 and his car went through a tire/guardrail barrier and then went through the fence, destroying a cement barrier before coming to rest near a fence where the fans were sitting on the 32nd lap. He and the fans were unharmed, but the race was red flagged for 25 minutes to repair the wall by adding 2 Jersey barriers.
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 also home to track announcer Sandy Reed and Roy Hord Jr. Both NASCAR team owners Roger Penske and Rick Hendrick drove a select few races at Riverside in their own cars, with Penske winning a Winston West race in 1963, while in the final NASCAR race in 1988, Hendrick got out of the car and let Elliott Forbes-Robinson take over.
The Winston Western 500 came to be known as the signature event at the track. Initially this race was held in January as the season opener, but beginning in 1982 NASCAR elected to start the season with the Daytona 500. From 1981 to 1987 the Winston Western 500 was held in November as the final race of the season. Until 2020, when Darlington, Charlotte and Daytona each hosted 3 races, 1981 was the only year in NASCAR history that one track held 3 Cup Series events in a single season. Riverside was the season finale in 1981 because Ontario Motor Speedway closed after their season ended in 1980.
Riverside also hosted drag racing events. Between 1961 and 1969, the Hot Rod Magazine Championship Drag Races, "one of the most significant drag racing events" of that era, were held at RIR. The championship offered a US$37,000 prize, greater even than a NHRA national event prize at the time.
Carroll Shelby and Skip Barber had racing schools at Riverside to teach students on how to drive around the racetrack and show them the preferred line on how to enter and exit a corner. Barber was the last racing school to be at Riverside when it was closed in 1989.
The Four Courses of Riverside
The track could accommodate several configurations, depending on the series and race length. Generally, the three options were the long course, the short course, and the NASCAR course. The fourth track configuration was a drag racing strip. Over the decades, various other configurations were used for off-road, Cal-Club and motorcycle events. Track crews created the configurations by placing traffic pylons to close off sections of the track.From 1957 to 1968, the racetrack's long course had a backstretch. Brake failure when approaching Turn 9 caused several accidents, and in 1969, when a water problem required a redesign, Turn 9 was given a wider radius, banking, and a dogleg approach to reduce strain on brakes. The long course was used primarily for the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix and, in the mid-1980s, for Indy car racing.
The short course used Turn 7A rather than 8, which shortened the back straight to just over one-half mile in length.
The NHRA drag strip ran south to north on the backstretch from the runoff to the Bosch Bridge, which crossed over the track about halfway between turns 8 & 9.
Movies and television
Due to its proximity to the Southern California entertainment industry, RIR was a frequent filming location for racing for Hollywood movies, television series and commercials.Scenes from the television shows The Rockford Files, CHiPs, Knight Rider and Simon and Simon were shot on location at RIR. Other shows filmed at RIR include The F.B.I., Quincy, M.E., The Fall Guy, Hardcastle & McCormick and the HBO program Super Dave Osborne. The television movie adaptation of Gemini Man, Riding With Death, featured as an experiment on the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000, also contains footage of racing at Riverside.
RIR was extensively featured in the 1961 telefilm "The Quick and the Dead", an episode of the series Route 66. The episode stars Martin Milner and George Maharis, and guest stars Frank Overton, Harvey Korman, Regis Toomey and Betsy Jones-Moreland. Milner races a 1960 powder-blue Chevrolet Corvette in the film.
A 1963 Plymouth-sponsored film called Return to Riverside was shot at RIR from November 26–29, 1962. The film highlighted various road tests between 1963 Plymouth, Chevrolet, and Ford passenger cars. It featured race car drivers Leroy Neumayer, Clem Proctor and Roger McCluskey. The film was hosted by Sid Collins, the radio voice of the Indianapolis 500.
Film shoots at RIR included scenes from: Good Guys Wear Black ''The Betsy, Fireball 500, Grand Prix, The Killers, The Love Bug, On the Beach, Roadracers, Speedway, Stacey, Thunder Alley and Winning''.