O, What a Place It Was : Part of Ontario Motor Speedway Becomes a Grade School

Twenty years ago Thursday, the first California 500 for Indy cars was run at Ontario Motor Speedway before 180,233 spectators, called at the time the largest attendance at any sporting event in California.

Jim McElreath, driving a backup Coyote-Ford owned by A.J. Foyt, won the race at an average speed of 160.106 m.p.h. and collected $156,000 from a purse of $727,500.

The attendance, the speed and the payoff were never bettered at Ontario.

OMS, a $35-million state-of-the-art race track that had risen from the dusty vineyards of Cucamonga, was called the Taj Mahal of motor racing. There had been nothing like it before--nor since.

It is gone now, nothing remaining on the site alongside Interstate 10 between Haven and Milliken avenues but a small pile of dirt--only a hint of the giant berm that supported the three-story building that looked out over the 2 1/2-mile track with its two infield lakes.

It is as if someone with a giant eraser has scrubbed it off the face of the earth. The erasing happened 10 years ago, when the Chevron Land and Development Co. purchased the bankrupt site and razed the racing facility to make way for its Ontario Center, a master-planned blend of office buildings, retail businesses, hotels, restaurants and residential developments.

But the memory of Sept. 6, 1970, and the magnificent racing facility that lasted a scant 10 years has been perpetuated at the Ontario Center in, of all places, an elementary school.

The Ontario Center School, located on what was once the west parking lot for the race track, was dedicated Thursday to the premise of “Winning Through Education.” The logo of OMS, known as the “Big O,” has been taken over by the school.

“The raceway theme has been used throughout the school,” school principal Donald Nicholson said. “The central hall is circular, similar to the race track, and speedway graphics can be seen in the classrooms.”

For instance, the kindergarten wing has green flags on its walls, signifying the start of the educational race. And the sixth-grade area is adorned with checkered flags--the finish line. Other rooms have blue and yellow “move over” motifs.

Three flagpoles in front of the school are from Ontario Motor Speedway. The school also hopes to acquire the original bricks of Victory Circle at OMS. They are reported to be in the basement of the Ontario City Hall, where they were taken when the bulldozers and the wrecking ball took over.

“We found on past elementary school projects that creating a design motif really gives the students and teachers something to identify with,” said Gaylaird Christopher, project architect for Wolff-Lang-Christopher, the school’s designers. “It was thought that the school should be reminiscent of the speedway.”

McElreath was at the dedication, having come from his home in Arlington, Tex., for the occasion. So was Parnelli Jones, a member of the original OMS board of directors and once president of the speedway.

And so were the 550 students of the new school, all wearing blue T-shirts with the school’s logo and the motto, “Winning Through Education.”

“It’s nice to be back here again, but I wish it was to go to the race track,” McElreath said. “That was the best in the world, no doubt about it, and it’s a real shame it wasn’t saved by someone in racing. There’ll probably never be one built again like Ontario.”

McElreath, 62, was wearing the 500 winner’s ring from Ontario, with its Big O centerpiece, and looked fit enough to climb into a car and go racing.

“How long has it been since you raced?” a school official asked McElreath.

“Last Monday,” he said, grinning as he caught the shocked look on the face of his questioner. “I haven’t driven an Indy car since 1983--I only gave them up because they got too expensive and sponsors were too hard to find--and I gave up sprint cars about three years ago, but I still drive my modified in dirt-track races.

“We went to DuQuoin (Ill.) for a race Labor Day, but I hit the wall during practice and didn’t make the race. Most of the time I run on little tracks around Waco and Ft. Worth and Dallas, places like the Devil’s Bowl where they run modifieds on a half-mile.”

McElreath drove the car in which he won the 500 only twice. The first time was in the 1970 Indy 500, where he qualified it late on the final day and had to start 33rd.

“It was a real good car, just like the one A.J. was driving, and I passed eight guys on the first lap and finished fifth,” he recalled. “It was just a one-race deal, and I had talked to Jack Brabham about driving his car at Ontario, so I wasn’t thinking about A.J. until he called me not long before the race. I didn’t have things set with Brabham so I told A.J. I’d take it.

“Late in the race when I was running about third and I saw LeeRoy (Yarbrough) in front, I thought maybe I’d made the wrong choice because he was in Brabham’s car. But then his car quit and I felt better about the whole deal.”

Al Unser, in the Ford-powered car he had driven to victory that year at Indianapolis, one owned by Parnelli Jones and Vel Miletich, dominated most of the race. Late in the running, after Peter Revson had lost nine minutes in the pits, Unser had a two-lap lead.

“There wasn’t anybody could touch Al that day,” McElreath said. “But it was real hot and his engine gave out, and that gave some of the rest of us a chance.”

It was so hot that only eight cars finished. Yarbrough led with nine laps remaining when his engine expired. That moved Art Pollard to the front, with McElreath close behind. Shortly after Pollard took over, Foyt hit the fourth-turn wall and brought out the yellow flag.

“It looked like the race might end on the yellow and it if did, Pollard would win,” McElreath said. “A.J. knew I was right behind him and had qualified a lot faster, so he jumped out of his wrecked car and helped the emergency crew get it off the track. When we got the green (flag), Art and I passed each other two or three times before I got ahead to stay before the last lap.”

McElreath’s personal share of the purse came to $62,353, the standard driver’s 40% of the winning payoff.

“That’s the only thing I got out of winning,” he said. “I didn’t get any good offers for rides, no celebrity status and no deals. I never drove that car again. It’s in the museum at Indianapolis now.”

McElreath raced six more times in the California 500 in a variety of equipment, but he never came close to winning again. In 1977, he and his son, James, made racing history when they became the first father-son entry in an Indy-car race.

“I bought a car from Fred Carillo for James to run and he qualified 18th and was running pretty good until his engine gave out,” McElreath said. “It was pretty exciting. He and I had run together the first time in a dirt car race at DuQuoin in 1975, but Ontario was the first big one we ran together.”

James was killed a month later in a sprint car race at Winchester, Ind.