Riverside International Raceway memories

My 1st trip to RIR was the 1960 Formula 1 USGP. I was 6 years old and don't really remember much of the race itself, but do remember the excitement of my dad and all of his race fan friends. As someone born into a family of motorsport fans, I'd been attending races since I was in the womb but it was obvious this race was a big deal.

F1 was still all about the racing then and hadn't grown into the sprawling giant it is today. There was no paddock area with 5 Star accomodations that today's F1 events host, in fact there wasn't much of a paddock at all and the cars were actually garaged in downtown Riverside. They used the service facilities of several car dealers on Market St to store and prepare the cars. They were actually driven to and from the track and that made quite a sight as the race cars drove through Riverside and Box Springs Canyon. Luckily, I was a passenger on my dad's motorcycle and he was able to work through traffic and I got many an upclose view of the cars.

The Trans-Am events were fun and NASCAR always put on an absolutely great show but IMO, the Can-Am races were definitely the best ever run at RIR. They just never built better cars than the Chaparral, Ford GT and especially the best racecar ever, Porsche's 917. The sights and sounds generated by those cars doing battle at RIR will probably never be topped by anyone again. Despite my fondness for Can-Am, my single favorite memory of RIR will always be Mark Donohue lapping the NASCAR field in a Matador. A friggin' Rambler of all things lapped the field. That was the talk of the town for quite a while and fondly remembered by many of us. Of course, Donohue had more than a little to do with it. He was always the favorite to win at RIR during his Can-Am years .

NASCAR's season opener used to be RIR in January (instead of Daytona in February as it is now) and after the Riverside Auto Center was built, the top NASCAR drivers would make personal appearances at the local dealships. Many of them would then retire to a little known pub tucked behind a coffee shop just north of the carwash and throw down a few drinks with the car salesmen who had snuck away from work for a quick belt. I met Tim Richmond in there when I stopped in to meet a friend who sold Hondas at Roger Miller Imports. Though friendly to everyone, Richmond was primarily interested in a couple of very pretty F&I girls who were in there taking a break from their jobs. It was a dark day for Riverside car salespeople when Bob Quaid (of Quaid Imports) got tired of his people sneaking away from work and bought the bar in order to shut it down and turn it into his F&I center. Many of the drivers who visited the bar and adjoining coffee shop took the time to sign their names and leave their handprints in wet cement and I've always wondered if anyone saved those squares of concrete that memorialised many of the greats such as Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt, Richard Petty and many more.

As a final aside, RIR may have the distinction of being the only motorsport facility in the world that needed the efforts of a Sheriff's Mounted Posse to run wild burros off the facility in the days leading up to a race.

It was a sad day indeed for motorsport fans all over the planet when the shut the gates for the last time at Riverside International Raceway.