In the 1960s, Dan Gurney virtually owned the NASCAR events at Riverside, with five wins on the storied 2.7-mile road course. Watch this action-packed video recap of his victory in the 1965 Motor Trend 500.
The phrase “road course ringer” is one of the most overworked story angles in NASCAR race reporting. But in the 1960s, it actually applied to the great Dan Gurney, who would jump into a Wood Brothers Ford at Riverside and beat up on a full field of NASCAR regulars. In seven starts on the Southern California road course for the Wood Brothers between 1963 and 1969, Gurney collected five wins.
In this sweet little video of the season-opening Motor Trend 500 on January 17, 1965, Gurney also emerged victorious. But to keep him honest on this day he had the legendary Junior Johnson, who led 11 laps and eventually finished second. A.J. Foyt also led a dozen laps, but it was in this race that Foyt suffered a vicious end-over-end crash that came close to ending his career. The 1965 event was action-packed, to say the least. Enjoy the show.
Brilliant video. That’s a part of history there!
Cool video. I used to build models of those cars. I would have preferred engine noises, even dubbed in, instead of that 70’s cop show music.
Good racing right there, folks.
Not only did Gurney dominate, but his setup skills helped Ford win every race from 1963 to January 1970. One was by a Mercury.
In those nine races, USAC drivers took home the trophy seven times (Gurney: 5, Foyt:1, Parnelli:1). Darel Dieringer was an outlier, he was a NASCAR driver and was the one in a Mercury.
The other outlier was Richard Petty whose skills everywhere else didn’t translate to Riverside. Until 1969, when he switched from Plymouth to Ford. Petty also broke the string of Ford wins in the 2nd Riverside race of 1970 after he had switched back to Plymouth. Interestingly, Gurney had driven a Petty Enterprises Plymouth in the 1sr Riverside race that season.
After his seven Riverside races in a Wood Brothers Ford and one in a Petty Plymouth, Gurney retired from driving in 1970, He came back for one more race, at Riverside, in a Chevrolet. He drove a Rod Osterlund car as a teammate to rising new driver Dale Earnhardt. He was in 3rd when the transmission broke and finished 28th. Earnhardt finished 2nd and he never bettered that finish at Riverside.
Ford also retired from racing in 1970, so their streak officially ended. An independent Mercury got three wins there in 1976 and 1977. Not surprisingly, it was a Wood Brothers car like Gurney had driven, but it didn’t hurt that David Pearson was driving. Fords won only three of the twenty-three others held until the track closed in 1988.
Les Richter owned Riverside International Raceway. He had been a linebacker for the LA Rams from 1954 to 1962. His uniform number was 48 and that’s where Gurney picked up the car number most associated with him.
barely on-topic: Roger Penske’s first NASCAR win was at Riverside with Mark Donohue driving an AMC Matador. It was the first win for AMC as well and they would only get four more, the others in the more aerodynamic 1974-75 model, all for Penske and by Bobby Allison (including 1975 at Riverside).
Great video, though, the phrase “road course ringer” is far from one of the most overworked story angles in NASCAR race reporting. It’s a term that’s barely used anymore.
The practice of driver substitutions for road course races simply doesn’t happen anymore at the Cup level. It occurs very little at the Nationwide level either, when does they are more like “guest driver” appearances where the team fields an additional car.
The most overworked phrase now might be something like “New Chase Format Puts Pressure on Drivers”.
Back when stock car racing was just that, stock cars. Yes I know they weren’t exactly stock, but compared to what they call a stock car today………..
I think it was Sam Posey who wrote about his experiences at Riverside with Dan Gurney, some years later. The cars were wired up with some primitive sort of data logging for the practice sessions. It turns out the NASCAR regulars were throwing the cars into the corners in a “fast-in, slow-out” style which worked best on the circle tracks. Gurney practiced a “slow-in, fast-out” style that gave him more car control, saved the tires from being as quickly overheated, and made for faster, more consistent laps. Even knowing the difference, the other drivers were not able to easily adopt Gurney’s driving style, so he would simply drive away from them, seemingly effortlessly.
We really should have made him President back in 1964. Were the other choices really that much better? White House Chief of Staff at the very least. It’s not too late.
I watched 65, then got 64 at the end. Dan and Wood Bros won both.
Those were cars that looked like cars and while decidedly loose actually dont look to bad on the track. I had seen 65 before, AJs big one was memorable.