Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Off-Road Track at Riverside Is One of a Kind

Each time a race is held at Riverside International Raceway there is justifiable speculation that it may be the last of its kind at the 30-year-old facility, which is scheduled to close at the end of this year.

Most of the races, such as the Times enduro for IMSA Camel GT sports cars, NASCAR’s Winston Cup stock cars, or the Trans-Am sedans, can readily be carried on at other facilities once the bulldozers move in at Riverside, but it is doubtful if another site can ever be found to match Riverside for its off-road racing course.

Built by veteran truck driver Walker Evans in 1974, it has been modified over the years to give the impression of a Baja 1,000 or a Mint 400 crammed into two miles of bumps, jumps, spins and the legendary Thompson’s Ridge.

“There is no other facility for off-road racing like Riverside,” said Sal Fish, president of SCORE International, which will present its 14th annual world closed course championship race there Aug. 15-17. “I can’t think of any other place that allows the heavy-metal pickup trucks to go 100 m.p.h. or the nimble lightweight Baja racers to do their thing on the same course.

“The course winds through great spectator facilities without losing any of the flavor of true Baja-style off-road racing. There’s nothing artificial about what the drivers do there.”

Two of the most competitive and entertaining races in Riverside’s storied past were off-road events.

In 1974, the year after Mickey Thompson had brought racing off the desert into a closed course, Roger Mears and Parnelli Jones, the retired 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner, went side by side or nose to tail for nearly 50 miles in unlimited single-seaters before Mears pulled away in his Cloud Hopper buggy.

“This was real professional racing,” Jones said when it was over. “I’m only racing for fun these days. If I’m going to do this sort of thing, on a closed course, I might as well gas up my stock car, or my midget, and go racing for money again. This was the same thing.”

The victory was one of 19 for Roger Mears in 40 off-road races at Riverside. From 1974 to 1984, the older Mears brother won at least one SCORE race every year. He will compete in three races this year in an attempt to start a new string, driving a new Nissan-backed Hardbody pickup in the Mini-Metal Challenge, his own desert truck in the mini-pickup class and a V-8 desert buggy in the unlimited single-seater class.

In 1983, when pickup trucks had replaced single-seaters as the glamour vehicles of off-road racing, Evans and Rod Hall put on a classic duel of Dodges, Evans in a two-wheel drive and Hall in a four-wheel drive. It ended just as Hall, in the heavier vehicle, pulled alongside Evans’ more nimble truck--only to have his truck quit cold with a broken drive train.

A year later in a similar race, Hall realized his ambition, to beat Evans.

“It just proves that if a guy stays after something long enough, he finally gets an acorn,” said the veteran Hall, who grew up driving Jeeps while a student at Perris High.

Thompson’s Ridge, an off-camber bank that runs for several hundred yards parallel to Riverside’s race course, has caused some of the most spectacular accidents imaginable. The ridge, which originally was covered with ice plant, became part of the off-road course in 1974 when Evans shortened the course from almost seven miles to less than three.

Former heavyweight boxing champion Ken Norton, driving a Jeep in a celebrity race in 1978, cartwheeled four times before his car plopped down in the dust. Norton climbed out to cheers from the crowd.

Another celebrity, Dan Haggerty, perhaps better known as Grizzly Adams, suffered a similar fate a year later on Thompson’s Ridge, demolishing his car without injuring himself or his co-driver.

They don’t have celebrity races there anymore.

The first SCORE race at Riverside in 1973 fell on the first weekend of the gasoline crunch. Attendance was much lower than anticipated, since many would-be spectators stayed home, fearing that they might not be able to get enough fuel for the return trip.

Despite that, the weekend was not without its unforgettable moments:

--Parnelli Jones drove his personal van on the course after practice was over and was chased by promoter Mickey Thompson, who maintained that Jones was indulging in illegal practice. Jones said that he had merely been taking friends on a tour of the track but Thompson wound up barring Parnelli from the inaugural race.

--Favorite Bobby Ferro crashed through a fence during a Saturday qualifying race, was knocked unconscious, and landed right side up in his buggy on Highway 60 headed for Palm Springs.

--Rick Mears, 21, a little known driver from Bakersfield, won the main event, and Ferro, in a borrowed buggy, finishing second.

SPRINT CARS--Brad Noffsinger, with eight victories this season in the California Racing Assn., holds a substantial lead in the standings, and his teammate, Clark Drake, is a candidate for rookie of the year. Drake, 22, a graduate of Narbonne High in Harbor City, learned his racing as a mechanic for veterans Shane Carson and Sammy Swindell in the World of Outlaws before coming home to Ascot Park this season to drive in the CRA for Jack Gardner and Mike Curb. Noffsinger and Drake will be racing again Saturday night at Ascot where Walt Kennedy will debut a new Ford Cleaver engine in his car.

STOCK CARS--Modifieds will return to Saugus Speedway Saturday night to headline a program that will include an Ascot vs. Saugus destruction team match. . . . Ron Meyer, leader in the Curb Motorsports Pro Stock division, and defending champion Don Wright Jr., will resume their rivalry Sunday night at Ascot Park. Meyer, with 10 main event wins, leads Wright, 336 points to 268, with Marcus Mallett at 264.

MOTORCYCLES--The Choppers will conclude a four-man match race series next Wednesday night at San Bernardino’s Inland Speedway as part of the weekly three division speedway program. . . . Speedway rider Mark Dwyer, surprise leader of the U.S. team in last week’s 57-50 win over the World team at Ascot Park’s South Bay Stadium, will return to the scene of his success tonight in an American Motorcyclist Assn. program. . . . John Houston, 18, one of Northern California’s leading speedway riders, will make his Southland debut Friday night at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. Houston’s father, John Sr., is the promoter of a speedway track in Auburn, Calif. . . . The CMC will hold its weekly motocross Friday night at Ascot Park.

POWER BOATS--The 38th annual Eagle One Catalina water ski race, a 62-mile event from Long Beach to Catalina’s Avalon Harbor and back, will be held Sunday, starting at 8 a.m. from Long Beach Harbor. More than 100 entrants are expected to compete in 16 classes, ranging from men’s and women’s open to veterans, novice and mixed doubles. Kurt Schoen set the record of 57 minutes 37 seconds last year while being pulled by Fred Miller. The women’s record of 1:04:59 was set in 1980 by seven-time winner Joannie Martini.

NEWSWORTHY--Jack Williams, former president of the Kern County Racing Assn. and general manager of Sears Point Raceway, is the new vice president of Charlie Allen’s Firebird International Raceway near Phoenix. . . . For anyone interested in becoming involved in off-road racing, Spencer Murray and James T. Crow have written a guide to equipment and techniques: Off-Roader’s Handbook ($12.95, HPBooks, Inc.).