RIR Pics -1- Diagrams and Overviews
RIR Pics Overlay with links
RIR Pics 1b Continues Diagrams and Overviews
RIR Pics 2 Page begins with Start-Finish
<<<   RIR Pics -3- Page begins after Turn Two
RIR Pics 4 Page begins with Turn Seven   >>>
RIR Pics 5 Page begins at Turn Eight
RIR Pics 6 Page Grand Prix Legends simulator frames
RIR Pics 7 Page is from a 1957
                                Sports Illustrated report
RIR Pics 7b Page SI 1960 Formula One Grand Prix report
RIR Pics 8 Page et seq. show 8mm film frames of a
                                Riverside long course lap
RIR Pics 9 Page Autoweek's RIR Requiem article

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A few years earlier than the advertisement, a reversal of that view. In a support race to the Times Grand Prix, a month before the F1 event, the Formula Junior field passes the bluffs on track right, and the rugged territory to their left.

There is a REALLY B I G (119K) version of this picture, in which you can see amazing detail, particularly in the flag stations at the top. See how close the foot of the bluff is to the track. Look at the same area in the next photo, for contrast.

To illustrate the change in track surroundings: I was working the up-track-looking flag position at this (Turn Six) location during a 1964 or so Cal Club Australian pursuit race. Flagmen stood atop the earthen bank that would have been intruding into the left edge of this photo. Our feet were maybe five feet higher than the track surface, perhaps 15 feet from the track itself and eight or so feet from the edge of the bluff. There was a car width between the edge of the track and the bottom of the bluff.

A TR3 hit a patch of oil at the apex visible in the upper left of this photo. The driver lost control, the car spun and slid to strike the bank at a point well out of the photo, then flipped and rolled a couple of times to land facing traffic and next to the bank, literally at my feet. I slid down the bank into a cloud of dust, and by the time it cleared I had the unconscious driver's restraints undone and was prepared to drag him out of the car, if the fire I could see through the vents in the top rear of the TR's hood, spread. It didn't, so we could wait for the ambulance personnel to do a proper job of moving him. He was having difficulty breathing and was bleeding from the ears. It was determined that his rollover bar had collapsed and his head was crushed. He died after several weeks in a coma.

Any road, it shows how concepts of track safety change, and gives an idea of what the terrain was like just off the surface of the track: it was unyielding and unforgiving.

A good-for-me photo (from the R&T report on the last race of the Formula) that also shows something about the track: looking across the second half of Turn Six you can see that Turn Eight has a little uphill in the approach and a tiny crest near the apex tires before it goes downhill and then off-camber at some place around the stack of bales. See Moss lead Gurney through the transition from Eight to the straight, by clicking H E R E.

P. Hill follows Daigh in the Scarab following Jim Hall in his mongrel Lotus. In the distance, seen just above Hall's engine cover, is a squatting Turn Marshal: Your OBedient Servant.

On the other side of the mountain (San Jacinto, 3100+ meters) is Palm Springs. The short one is Mount Russell, 824 meters.

It appeared the "NASCAR road" that connected Six and Eight had not yet been built, and there was nothing other than skill keeping the drivers from going off the outside of the turn and down a steep slope.

On the basis of subsequent photos, I now believe my supposition about the NASCAR road not being in place in November, 1960, was a matter of the above photo not representing a significant difference between asphalt and desert dirt at the edge of Turn Eight.

Here's what that link looked like from Turn Eight, ten years later:

                                                                        Photo: Mike Smith

Turn Six grandstand obscures the horizon and a row of pylons blocks entry to the Six-Seven straight, in case anyone was tempted.

Just out of the photo to the right, near California Highway 60, stood a marquee sign. It was probably not there at the time of the 1960 photo, but it was present even after demolition of the raceway was begun. I took a picture from the highway as we drove past. The high ground at the right is where Turn Six was. Hard to identify anything else. More drive-by sadness at RIR Requiem 2.

See more of Mike Smith's Riverside International Raceway and other racing photos at this Web site:  Turbo's Racing Photos

At Tam's Old Race Car Site you will find some pictures of Riverside International Raceway as it appears today. Start at "What's new..."