Twilight of the Hanford
Motor Speedway
Part five - the end of the first superspeedway west of the
Mississippi
The years of 1967 and 1968 represented the high-water mark in
the history the Hanford Motor Speedway, as the 1-1/2-mile paved tri-oval hosted
three USAC (United States Auto Club) National Championship races promoted by JC
Agajanian which were wildly successful with crowds of over 15,000 reported for
each event.
However, there was trouble on the horizon The state of the
art 2-1/2-mile oval Ontario Motor Speedway was under construction 200 miles to
the south of Hanford, and USAC’s continued its direction towards corporate
partnerships with new road course racing venues.
There were financial problems for
the track operator, KS Racing Enterprises Inc. which was locked in an ongoing battle
with the track owner B.L. Marchbanks over the contract terms. The disagreement over
distribution of the proceeds from advance ticket sales was further exacerbated
when KS Racing Enterprises fell behind on rental payments.
Kalmon “Kal” Simon the President of KS had also lost a
lawsuit filed by a Fresno paving company over non-payment for paving work
completed at the site during 1967 and 1968.
At the same time, Marchbanks was in negotiations for the sale of Hanford
Motor Speedway with American Raceways Inc. (ARI) the owner of the new Michigan
International Speedway. ARI controlled by developer Lawrence LoPatin had bought
Atlanta Raceway and was in the process of building the Texas World Speedway,
but talks on the sale of Hanford progressed in fits and starts.
The 25-race 1969 USAC schedule originally included two dates
for Hanford – the ‘California 200’ scheduled for Sunday April 13, and the ‘California
250’ slated for October 19. That Hanford held onto two dates was a testament to
JC Agajanian’s prestige with the other USAC board members, as USAC officials remained
deeply unhappy with the primitive conditions at Hanford which used temporary
grandstands, concession stands and restrooms. Additionally, in response to new
car owners and drivers, USAC required promoters to guarantee higher purses, at
least $30,000 against 40% of the ticket receipts in the case of Hanford.
In January 1969 JC Agajanian announced that the 1-1/2-mile
paved tri-oval would host an open-competition supermodified and caged sprint
car race on Sunday afternoon February 9.
This event was a follow-up to the success of a pair of ‘Open-Competition
Supermodified and Caged Sprint Car 100-mile Championship’ held in the fall of
1968 at the California State Fairgrounds mile dirt track and Agajanian’s Ascot
Park half-mile dirt track. Agajanian stated that he expected average lap speeds
of over 140 MPH during the event sanctioned by the California Racing
Association (CRA) which carried a purse of $10,000.
Among the 100 entries for the 33-car open competition 100-mile
race on the “the fastest racing track in the West” included Northern California
midget racer Hank Butcher in John Driver’s “Flying Wing” sprint car, the 1963
and 1968 CRA champion Bob Hogle, and Ned Spath in Carl Alleman’s
Chevrolet-powered rear engine Huffaker ex-Indianapolis car. Out of state
entries came from drivers in New York, Ohio, North Dakota and Iowa, with former
Indianapolis drivers Wayne Weiler and Colby Scroggin also scheduled to
appear.
Johnny Parsons, Junior, son of the 1950 Indianapolis
champion emerged with the pole position after qualifying on Sunday morning with
a lap of 141.546 miles per hour (MPH) in an older converted Indianapolis
roadster. Parsons led the race’s first
16 laps, but dropped out with mechanical problems. Hogle in the
Offenhauser-powered Morales “Tamale Wagon” who had started in the 12th
position, inherited the lead after mid-race leader Walter Reiff dropped out. With
Hanford favorite Frank Secrist in second place, Hogle made his mandatory pit
stop five laps from the end of the 67-lap race, which handed the lead to
Secrist, who had not yet made his required stop.
Secrist who had started from the 16th position brought
his car into the pit area with three laps to go, but instead of adding just a
few gallons of fuel his crew nearly filled the car’s tail tank. As Secrist lost
valuable time, Hogle regained the lead then won the 67-lap race and the $2,500
first-place check with Secrist second half a lap behind. 18 of the 33 starters
finished the race, with Dieter Mundweiler of New York in third place in his
roadster. Promoter Agajanian had to be disappointed with the crowd of only
5,500 fans for his ‘CRA Open-Competition Supermodified and Caged Sprint Car Sweepstakes.’
For the third annual “California 200’ JC Agajanian dropped
ticket prices to $10 for a grandstand seat close to the starting line and $8
for all the other reserved grandstand seats, with $6 general admission tickets
available at the gate the day of the race.
He also added a “lead in” event with a 100-lap USAC midget race the
night before at the Kearney Bowl in Fresno, an hour’s drive from Hanford
Speedway. Some of the lesser-known drivers advertised as last-minute entries
for the ‘California 200’ included Leon “Jigger” Siriois, sprint car racers Larry
Dickson and Sammy Session and Hungarian-Canadian driver George Fejer in his own
Chinook creation.
Mario Andretti, in the first year of his contract with STP
Oil Treatment and car owner Andy Granatelli, qualified for the pole position in
the Brawner Hawk III with a speed of 160.115 MPH. Once again, the Joe Hunt
Magneto Special a front engine upright dirt car made the starting field after
Bakersfield’s George Snider replaced the original driver Greg Weld. The 23rd qualifier was Ned Spath
in the Alleman Chevrolet powered Huffaker that had competed in the open
competition caged sprint race the month on the same track.
Only 25 cars started the race, as the cars entered for Sam
Sessions, Larry Dickson, Denny Zimmerman, Bobby Johns, George Fejer and Ronnie
Bucknum did not appear, and the Seidelman dirt car driven by midget champion Tommy
Copp and Wilbur ‘Wib’ Spaulding’s Lotus both broke in practice, leaving the
field one car short. Even worse for the
race promoter, only 12,075 fans reportedly passed the turnstiles; as USAC
officials had predicted, without permanent seating and sanitation facilities,
attendance figures continued to drop.
Andretti went to the lead at the drop of the green flag and
led until lap 70 when he dropped in to make his pit stop. His teammate, Art
Pollard in the STP Gerhardt Offenhauser was already in his pit stall and while
the crew toiled, Pollard’s car caught fire. The uniforms of three mechanics on
Pollard’s crew, Edward “Red” Stainton, Ed Stratton and Grant King caught fire,
and Stainton backpedaled away from the fire and into the path of Andretti’s
passing car.
After Stainton was struck, USAC officials immediately threw the
red flag to stop the race while safety crew extinguished the fire and tended to
the injured crewmembers. Stainton with
second degree burns and “critical head injuries” and Stratton and King, with
second degree burns, were loaded into the two ambulances on site and
transported to Fresno Community Hospital.
With no ambulance on site, the race remained stopped for
close to ninety minutes until one of the ambulances returned. The race resumed
with Andretti still in the lead, as apparently his car had sustained no damage,
and Mario led the rest of the race to claim the victory, his first of nine race
wins during the 1969 season. Lloyd Ruby in the ‘Wynn's Spit-Fire Special’ finished
second one lap behind Andretti with Gordon Johncock and Johnny Rutherford third
and fourth on the same lap as Ruby. Attrition
had been high as only eleven cars were still on course at the finish. No one
knew it that day, but fans had witnessed the last race at Hanford Motor
Speedway.
In victory lane with a check for $6,900 the winner’s portion
of the $30,000 purse, Andretti admitted that Stainton’s injuries “certainly
colors the rest of the day.” King and
Stratton were treated and released after treatment of their burns, while
Stainton underwent emergency surgery later Sunday night in Fresno, but he
passed away from his injuries on Tuesday April 15, 1969 at age 38 and was laid
to rest in his hometown of Sanger California.
Over the months that followed the 1969 ‘California 200,’
negotiations with ARI officials for the sale of Hanford Motor Speedway stalled,
then collapsed in early September. Within days of the news of ARI’s withdrawal,
USAC Director of Competition Henry Banks reportedly sent a letter to KS Racing
Enterprises Inc which stated that Hanford’s seating and sanitation facilities
were substandard and had to be upgraded.
USAC also demanded that that the paddock area behind the hot
pit area be paved, and Banks’ directive stated that if these improvements were
not made, Hanford and Agajanian would forfeit the October 19, 1969 race date. Kal
Simon President of KS Racing Enterprises freely admitted that the company “did
not have the resources to make the improvements” but reminded listeners that “there
was not enough time to make the improvements anyway.”
USAC subsequently canceled the ‘California 250’ date, however,
according to Agajanian, Banks and the USAC board agreed to hold open the spring
and fall Indianapolis car dates on the 1970 USAC schedule and would grant him an
additional sanction for a stock car date in 1970, provided the facility
improvements were completed in time.
Although there was some public outcry that USAC was unfairly
punishing Hanford, Deke Houlgate in his syndicated “Motorsports Today” column
that appeared in many in California newspapers noted that the Hanford paddock
area “comes in two conditions, a quagmire if it has rained or a dust bowl if it
hasn’t.” Houlgate also observed that “sanitation, as many Hanford fans will
attest, is slightly superior to what is found five miles from the nearest dirt
road in the Mohave Desert.”
In mid-December 1969,
Al Auger’s column in the Hayward Daily Review newspaper reported that
Kal Simon, the Hanford track president, announced plans to build a roofed
25,000 seat grandstand “early next year.” Other planned improvements included
“black-topping of the pit area, new ticket and entrance booths, press box and
parking improvements,” but the article made no mention of any planned sanitary
improvements. Promoter JC Agajanian was quoted by Auger that with the Labor Day
1970 500-mile race scheduled at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, “it would be
only natural to have a follow-up race at Hanford.” Auger wrote that “this is
the main reason for the face-lifting,” which ignored USAC’s September 1970
directive.
The planned roofed grandstand and the other improvements at
Hanford obviously never came to fruition, and instead of a race at Hanford
Agajanian promoted a new September date race on the 1970 USAC schedule on the
State Fairgrounds mile dirt track in Sedalia Missouri. Though Hanford Speedway sat
idle during 1970 significant events occurred behind the scenes and in late August
1970, Jay Kuhne identified as a vice-president and treasurer of Hanford Motor
Speedway Inc (HMSI) began to tour the state to promote a stock offering to redevelop
the Hanford track.
The traveling presentation road show, complete with artists
renderings of the new grandstand and pit area visited Bakersfield, Fresno,
Visalia, Upland, Newport Beach, Oakland, Sacramento and San Diego. Kuhne
announced that the group planned “to organize the new company with an initial
capitalization of $750,000 that would enable us to acquire the existing track
free and clear to build a new 25,000 (uncovered) grandstand comparable in
spectator comfort to OMS to create new garage and pit facilities layout access
roads parking and landscaping “to make it truly and auto racing showcase.” The new company offered “investment units” of
$2,500 each that consisted of 25 shares of $100 par value each to be sold to a
maximum of 300 California residents through a syndicate of investment brokers
throughout California.
Along with Kuhne, an investment analyst, other officers of
HMSI formed on April 24, 1970 with an office in the Wilshire financial district
included Robert Carlin, Los Angeles attorney that specialized in oil and gas
law as President, with Patrick Cooney an oil and gas machinery importer as a
vice-president and Secretary and Agajanian listed as a vice-president and
manager of racing. Kuhne claimed that the USAC board had “tentatively
sanctioned” a September 1971 300-mile race “in alignment with Ontario Motor
Speedway (OMS)” with promises of a 300-mile USAC stock car race. Agajanian
also suggested that the track could host a 250-mile American Motorcycle
Association (AMA) race as at the time Agajanian promoted many AMA events in
California.
Kuhn stated in an October 1 article published in Bakersfield
California that “we have already reached one-third of our goal and we hope
to have the entire issue subscribed before Nov 1.” An article later in October revealed that sales
had reached 40% of the $750,000 goal and a press release listed other members
of the Hanford Motor Speedway Inc board that included Bobby Unser, Agajanian, and
David Lockton and Chuck Barnes of the Sports Headliners talent agency, with the
latter pair members of the Ontario board of directors so their inclusion was identified
as part of “planned financial alignment” with OMS.
The 1971 USAC championship racing schedule which was released
on Thursday December 12, 1970 listed two dates for Hanford Motor Speedway, with
the “Hanford 150’ on March 14, and a “tentative” October 10 date for the ‘Hanford
200.’ An ominous article in January 1971
written by Jim Bryant in the Ontario Daily Report identified Hanford as
the possible “first casualty of the Southern California race slate” as the
author mused that the area was over-saturated with racing venues that included
Riverside International Raceway (an ARI property) and Ontario Motor Speedway
which already experienced slow ticket sales.
With the failure of Hanford Motor Speedway Inc. to generate
the planned capitalization to buy the track and make the required USAC
improvements, the 1971 scheduled Hanford races never occurred, although the Hanford
facility was still included on an inventory of USAC sanctioned tracks released
in August 1971. The one-time hoped-for
savior of Hanford, Lawrence LoPatin’s American Raceways, Inc. a five-track
conglomerate, itself filed for bankruptcy protection during 1971 and was gone
for good in late 1972.
The state of the art Ontario Motor Speedway the construction
of which in some ways hastened Hanford’s downfall, hosted its last races in
1980 after a short ten-year run, as ticket sales never met initial estimates to
service its debt, and the track finally was demolished in the mid-1980’s. The
builder and owner of the Hanford Motor Speedway, B.L. Marchbanks reportedly
passed away in 1979, and the remains of the racing facility were demolished in
1984 and the property reverted to farmland.
The racing at Marchbanks Stadium, whether on the smaller
original ½-mile and 1/3-mile tracks or the later 1.4-mile paved tri-oval was
always good – attendees recall the three Indianapolis-car races held in the
track’s heyday as very competitive events. One may ponder what could have been,
but in retrospect, the track’s remote location and reliance on temporary
grandstands and sanitary facilities during Indianapolis car racing’s major
growth period doomed its survival. Although Hanford Motor Speedway itself is
long gone, Mr. Marchbanks will forever be remembered through his membership in
the West Coast Stock Car Racing Hall of Fame as a visionary for his
contribution that brought to life the first superspeedway west of the
Rockies.
