2 Comments
  1. Walter Gomez

    Excellent; thanks! I was just talking about this race with a friend the other day!

    I was fortunate at the age of 9 to go to the 1964 Times Grand Prix in October of 1964 with my father and older brother. Like the ’65 race, all the big time race drivers were there, and remember rooting for both Parnelli Jones and Hap Sharp. Back then Riverside was the desert, so mom slathered sun tan lotion on us, bought us hats and sunglasses to cope with the expected heat and sun. We sat at Turn Six, first set of bleachers on the left in the video, about half way up. From there we had an excellent view of the esses, and a partial view of the back straight! I still have the ’64 program which you have shown!

    Thanks again!

  2. My Dad took me to March Air Force Base races before RIR was completed, then later to RIR. We would often sit in turn six bleachers, but I can’t recall where I was at the ’65 race. Somewhere I have B&W stills I took in the pit area of many of the cars at the ’65 race, including the Ford GT roadster and both Chaparrals, but haven’t been able to find them. I’m sure I was extremely disappointed when Jim Hall failed to start, but later went crazy when Hap Sharp won the race.

    I didn’t have a decent still camera, but I did have 8mm and super-8 movie cameras handed down to me by my uncle so I would do my best to document the action. The link in the post to the home movies are all of the racing movies I took edited down to about an hour. I remember wishing I had more telephoto, and went to a camera store to see what could be done. I ended up buying a ring that would fairly tightly fit around camera’s zoom lens. The ring had threads on the other side so I could screw on another lens that offered somewhat of a telephoto boost. Later when I did get into still photography, I had a Minolta 35mm SLR with a 200mm lens, teleconverter, and a gunstock so I could hold the whole menagerie steady. Using that setup I did manage to grab a few memorable shots. I have two shots of Donohue at Elkhart (about 1974) in the 917-30 that I’m proud of.

    I was at Stardust in ’68 and saw Hall’s crash. I had been standing at the very corner where it happened, but ran out of movie film and had walked to another corner. I was following Hall around the track with binoculars because I could see the wing even when the car disappeared. Then I saw the back end of the car come up. It was scary.

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