Riverside International Raceway

Riverside International Raceway was a complex in Southern California, featuring a multi-configuration road course which is one of the most famous of all the American race tracks. There were various configuration options, permitting road courses ranging in length from 2.54 to 3.3 miles. There also was a 1/2 mile paved oval and a 1/4 mile paved dragstrip, and an offroad course which was used for a number of SCORE championships.

Riverside has long since been converted to a shopping mall and housing.

Thanks to William Waters for the scans of Cal Club documents.

Last Updated: 2019-12-23

Table of Contents

• Track Facts
• Historic Racing Results
• Historical Note
• Track Office
• Track Map
• Search for Web Pages
• Search for News
• Search for Images
• Getting There

Offsite Links

• Remembering Riverside Facebook Group

Track Facts

Search for Historic Racing Results

Historical Note

The road course opened on September 21st, 1957, and operated until 1988. The original proposal included a Club Circuit on the northeast side of the property; this was never paved and the version shown on the track map is an approximation based on the 1967 aerial imagery.

The original pits were on the outside of the track between Turns 1 & 9; for 1963 they were moved inside and the curve of Turn 1 was softened. The revised turn 9 was built in 1969. Options were built to allow for two shorter courses, one of which was commonly used by NASCAR and the other by IMSA. The intermediate options were funded by Cal Club around 1979-80 and allow a number of alternate configurations (see 1984 map for examples).

The paved oval operated from June 25th, 1960 through 1966; it incorporated the original turn 9 of the road course on its south end.

The dragstrip operated from 1959 through 1970, and from 1983 through 1986. During the 60s, the dragstrip was sometimes operated at 1/2 mile length for the land speed enthusiasts; generally during the months when the Great Salt Lake was not usable due to weather.

The final year of road course operations was 1989; contstruction of the first housing project was underway and had wiped out the long straight, so a modified version was used under the name Riverside Regional Raceway.

References

Dick Wallen, Riverside Raceway: Palace of Speed. Glendale, Arizona: Dick Wallen Productions, 2000 .

Allan E. Brown, The History of America's Speedways: Past & Present. Comstock Park, Michigan: Brown, 2003 , ISBN 0931105617 , pp. 158. Order from National Speedway Directory

Gordon Eliot White, Lost Race Tracks: Treasures of Automobile Racing. Hudson, Wisconsin: Iconographix, 2006 , ISBN 1583880844 , pp. 21.

CalClub SCCA, Race schedule documents. California Sports Car Club, 1984, 1989 .

Track Office

Track Map

The first map dates from around 1956 (before the track opened) and shows the proposed but never paved club course option on the right upper side. This map is not to scale, and the club course that was bulldozed differs a bit from the illustration.

The next map dates from about 1962, and shows the original turns 1 and 9, the oval, the pits on the outside of the track, and the generally more limited set of options that were in use at the time.

This map dates from the mid 80s, and shows a variety of options and the final version of turn 9. The map shows the options added by CalClub around 1980 as Eastworld and Westworld, but CalClub members who raced and worked there in the period state that it was Eastline, not Eastworld.

This set of maps dates from 1984, and shows the variants that CalClub used for their race series that year.

This map shows the abbreviated configuration used by CalClub in 1989, the year the track operated as Riverside Regional Raceway.

Search for Web Pages

Search for News

You may also wish to try using the Yahoo! Search as it may produce current news items.

Search for Images

Getting There

Address:
using Google Maps.

Copyright/License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

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