Riverside Raceway’s history began with European-bred sports car enthusiast and Los Angeles restaurateur (The Blarney Castle) Rudy Cleye’s dream to create a major closed-course sports car racing facility in the Western United States.  His vision became reality when California sports racing team owner John Edgar decided to back Cleye’s concept through his John Edgar Enterprises, with Edgar becoming the financier for construction and completion of what was then named Riverside International Motor Raceway.  E. Forbes “Robbie” Robinson was general manager, and Steve Mason handled publicity. 

 

Only three miles southeast of Riverside, California, and just north of March Air Force Base, the new racing plant was built on the 50-acre section of a 528-acre rolling parcel that once served as a turkey ranch.     

 

The impressive 3.275-mile Riverside track opened on September 21, 1957, with a California Sports Car Club-sponsored competition 2-day event of 16 races that immediately focused attention on the remarkable new race course.  Designed along European Grand Prix specs, the 9-turn, up-and-down-hill, asphalt road racing circuit featured its soon-to-be-famous 60-ft.-wide, mile-long straight with banked horseshoe at the end.  

 

Starter Arnie Cane flagged home the winner of the very first race staged at Riverside, in opening day Saturday’s 6-lap event for production cars under 1300cc, Rod Bowers driving an Alfa Romeo Spyder.     

 

Rudy Cleye entered a 6.5-liter Chrysler-powered Kurtis.  Other Riverside inaugural competitors not already named here included Pedro Rodriquez, Lance Reventlow, Ronnie Buchnum, Frank Monise, Ken Miles, Jack McAfee, Bob Oker, Max Balchowsky, Eric Hauser, Jay Hills, Ginny Sims, Jack Nettercutt, Jean Pierre Kunstle, Bob Bondurant, Mickey Thompson, Ruth Levy and Betty Shutes.      

 

John Edgar’s entry won top honors in that initial meet at Riverside.  Sunday’s Main, billed “The Los Angeles Cup,” with a starting field that included Bill Pollack, Pete Woods, Bob Drake, Chuck Daigh and Bill Murphy, was won by Richie Ginther at the wheel of Edgar’s Ferrari 410S.  A month later, at the First SCCA National Championship races to be held at Riverside, an Edgar entry won the Main again, this time with Shelby piloting Edgar’s Maserati 450S.  Finishing a close second in that still-celebrated, classic sports car battle – waged among the gifted Shelby, Ginther, Masten Gregory, John von Neumann and Walt Hansgen – was a rising young Riverside local driving Frank Arciero’s Ferrari 375 Plus with the touch of a master.  His name, from that day forward known and revered throughout the world of motor racing, is Dan Gurney.

 

The November 20, 2003, Riverside Raceway Reunion at the Petersen Automotive Museum honored Dan Gurney and many others who brought fame to their names and performances at Riverside International Raceway in so many varied forms of racing – from Sports Cars, Formula 1, Can-Am, Trans-Am, Formula 5000, Indy Car, Drags, USAC sprints and midegets, IMSA, NASCAR, to SCORE Off Road.  And, in memoriam, we salute those two sportsmen who made Riverside happen, initiating its illustrious span of three decades of much of the best of American road racing – Riverside Raceway pioneers Rudy Cleye and John Edgar.