The Marchbanks Speedway – Hanford California
Part two of the history of the first superspeedway west of the
Mississippi
For the 1960 racing season Kings County California farmer Bircha
Lewis “B.L”. Marchbanks expanded his 160-acre stadium automobile racing venue southeast
of Hanford with the construction of a new 1-3/8-mile long paved oval with three
corners that incorporated the sharp 22-degree banked first turn shared with the
existing ½-mile paved oval track.
The new track, reportedly designed by Marchbanks himself, also
featured a lake in the infield, created when the material removed was used to
the build the banking for the new tri-oval layout. Marchbanks reportedly spent $200,000 (later
listed as $700,000 then as much as $1 million) on the improvements which
included a new 7,000-seat grandstand located on the front straightaway near the
entry of the first turn.
The first event at the new Marchbanks Stadium were boat drag
races on the lake held the weekend of February 13 & 14 1960 sanctioned by
the National Boat Timing Association of Bakersfield which had originated the
sport several years earlier. Fans paid
an admission charge of $1.00 each to watch 15 classes of racing in time trials
and eliminations and Harold Kindsvater of Fresno won Top Eliminator honors with
a run of 100.1 miles per hour (MPH).
That same week, Mr. Marchbanks traveled to Daytona Beach Florida
site of the Daytona ‘500’ to drum up interest for the upcoming ‘California 250’
NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Racing) race scheduled for June on
his new speedway. Rex White related his
initial impression of Marchbanks in his autobiography Gold Thunder. “While at Daytona I met this character from
California named Marchbanks - everywhere he went he wore a cowboy hat and
boots. He had come from California to get drivers to run his new track in
Hanford - Joe Weatherly and I agreed, making plans to go in June.”
Rex White and Joe Weatherly were not yet “big names” in NASCAR
although White had won five Grand National races in 1959 in his own gold and
white #4 Chevrolet Impala and Weatherly had notched 12 wins in four seasons in
the NASCAR convertible division as a factory-backed Ford Thunderbird driver.
The June 11th and 12th weekend races
were advertised as “the biggest race west of the Mississippi” with a hardtop
race scheduled for the half-mile track on Saturday night prior to the Sunday
afternoon main event. Pre-race newspaper articles falsely stated that the ‘California
250’ “would attract the nation’s leading late model drivers among them Lee and
Richard Petty, Ned Jarrett, Junior Johnson, Bobby Johns, Buck Baker and
Fireball Roberts.”
A majority of the 33-car starting field for the ‘California
250’ were California drivers with a sprinkling of other drivers from Western
states - White and Weatherly were the only Southeastern NASCAR drivers to make
the trip to California. White recalled in his autobiography, Gold Thunder
that “many of the drivers decided not to
go to California as the money was too little to warrant the trip. I’d promised
Marchbanks I’d be in his inaugural race and signed the registration. Since he’d
advertised my entry and Bill France was flying me out and back I was committed
to go.” Rather than his regular 1960 Chevrolet wrenched by Louis Clements,
White was scheduled to drive a 1959 Ford owned by legendary West Coast racer
Scotty Cain, while Weatherly was entered in a 1960 Ford owned and sponsored by
Torrance California car dealer Vel Miletich.
With a total posted purse of $18,425 (including $4,875 in
contingency money) NASCAR President Bill France, on hand for the race, proclaimed
it to be “the biggest stock car race on the west coast since the Gilmore Gold trophy
race at Mines Field in 1934” and that “this little town will be the hub of auto
racing west of the Rockies.”
some of the drivers labeled the first turn “dangerous” after
pre-race practice on Friday, but in Saturday afternoon qualifying, Frank Secrist
of nearby Oildale won the coveted pole position at a reported average speed of 94
MPH trailed by Colorado’s John Rostek, Lloyd Dane and Cain with Fritz Wilson
rounding out the top five.
According to newspaper reports, Secrist’s 1960 Ford
Starliner “hit 137 MPH on the straights.” White who had won earlier in April
and was in third place in Grand National points qualified ninth while
Weatherly, tenth in points, and the hottest driver on the NASCAR circuit with
three wins so far in 1960, started 32nd.
After qualifying and prior to the start of the hardtop race the
track hosted a “cowboy barbeque” for fans at the cost of $1.00 a plate. Rex
White remembered that “Marchbanks perhaps
should have opened a restaurant. He got a front-end loader, dug a hole in
ground, added an air tunnel, built a fire in the hole and put timbers over the
fire. He let it burn down to coals and added mesquite. Then he lowered a dead
skinned cow into the timbers and covered the whole thing over with dirt. It
cooked for 24 hours. When he took that cow out, he cut away dirty part of the
meat and served it to fans. I ate some myself and I’ll tell you it was good.”
The morning of the race, 400 Autolite parts distributors
from various locations throughout Northern California arrived in eight
chartered Greyhound busses to join the sold-out crowd. Secrist, Cain, Dane and
Las Vegas’ Mel Larson each took turns in the lead before Marvin Porter from
Redlands California, the 1959 NASCAR Short Track National Champion led the
final 50 laps to claim the victory, with his teammate for this race, Weatherly,
46 seconds behind him.
Rex White finished the ‘California 250’ in eighth place,
which gained him valuable points on his way to the 1960 NASCAR Grand National
championship. Although White misidentified
the track surface incorrectly in his autobiography, Gold Thunder as he recalled
that “the track was good considering it
was dirt but there was little hope of its survival. They had a few grandstands,
outhouse toilets and unbearable heat - race day it was 104 degrees.”
In July 1960, the banked half-mile track hosted the Formula
Racing Association two-day event which featured Formula Juniors and sports cars
including lady racer Odette Bigler with a Lotus 18, that competed for cash
prizes. This professional sport car race was repeated in 1961 with an event
that attracted many prestigious West Coast racers including Jack McAfee and Bruce
Eglinton.
On September 11, 1960, the American Motorcycle Association (AMA)
motorcycles raced in a scheduled 100-mile race that was race shortened to 75
miles due to the heat. Though it is undetermined which of the three tracks hosted
the event, three-time AMA champion Joe Leonard held a two-lap lead when his
machine broke a valve, and Don Smith took the victory.
A week later Marchbanks Stadium hosted a two-day event for the
California Sports Car Club along with “grand prix motorcycles” on the 1.8-mile
road course which used portions of the 1.4-mile tri-oval, the 1/3-mile oval and
the ½-mile oval. With the cars and cycles racing on what was described as the
“Monza-style banking” lap speeds of over 100 MPH were optimistically predicted
in pre-race news articles.
Perhaps due to concerns about heat, the date for the 1961
NASCAR ‘California 250’ was moved to March 12 and featured a larger purse of
$14,075 with $2,600 earmarked for the race winner. Rex White returned, this
time joined by fellow Southerners Edwin ‘Banjo’ Matthews and Glen ‘Fireball’
Roberts. Roberts, in a 1961 Pontiac owned by Arizona’s JD Braswell, started on
the outside of the front row, led every one of the 179 laps, and he won by more
than two laps over second place Eddie Gray’s 1961 Ford.
Throughout the summer and fall of 1961 for 22 consecutive
Saturday nights beginning May 6, the Marchbanks Stadium half-mile track hosted
a modified and claimer car racing program, with 1960 track champion Frank
Secrist the headliner for the modified program along with Bud Dyson, Al Pombo
and Johnny Mello, with the claimer field led by Bob Knight and Eddie ‘Bad Boy’
Bradshaw. Marchbanks with the umbrella
company, Marchbanks Sports Clubs Inc., continued as the promoter at Bakersfield
Speedway in Oildale.
In early November 1961, perhaps based on the success of the Formula
racing events, B.L. Marchbanks promoted “the greatest road show race on the
West Coast,” a 125-mile race with the 75 fastest “stock cars, late models,
modified and claimer drivers and cars on the West Coast.” Dubbed the ‘Pacific
Coast Championship Road Race,’ sanctioned by NASCAR to be held on the nine-turn
1.8-mile road course, the race attracted the entry of headliner Al Pombo, who
was billed as “the best driver to come out of Fresno since Bill Vukovich.” Pombo was the 1961 California state hardtop
racing champion as well as the Kearney Bowl and Clovis Speedway track champion.
For the 1962 season, Mr. Marchbanks was no longer the
promoter of Bakersfield Speedway, replaced by boxing promoter Ed York’s Racing
Associates Inc. In early 1962 Marchbanks Speedway advertised that they would
hold NHRA sanctioned drag races the third Sunday of every month but it is
unknown what if any other weekly racing programs were held during the 1962
season.
On Sunday April 8, the track hosted a NASCAR sanctioned
100-mile “new stock car race” for Pacific Coast Late Models on the 1.4-mile
tri-oval. Entries included Pombo in a
1961 Oldsmobile, Scotty Cain in a 1962 Ford along with Lloyd Dane, Louie Unser
in a 1962 Pontiac, and 1951 Marchbanks NASCAR winner Danny Weinberg all
competing for a $4,200 purse.
Downey’s
Danny Letner, the 1955 NASCAR Pacific Coast champion, won the pole position in
a 1961 Ford with Eddie Gray alongside to lead the 30-car starting field to the
green flag. Only 4500 fans turned out to watch Letner lead the 72-lap race wire-to-wire in what was apparently the
last NASCAR Pacific Coast Late Model event held at Marchbanks.
With an announcement of an agreement in late April, the 1963
Marchbanks Stadium racing season opened on May 17 with the track operated by Racing Associates Inc. Initially Marchbanks Stadium ran
a jalopy and sportsmen racing program on Friday nights with Bakersfield
Speedway holding a similar program on Saturday nights along with periodic
boxing matches at the facility.
Mid-way through the 1963 season, a figure-eight layout was
added to the 1/2-mile Marchbanks oval for the new ‘Crazy 8’ racing program to
cash in on a short-lived fad. These races were open to sportsmen, jalopies or
modified cars, with the race stopped only if a car was upside down, on fire or
if the driver was “obviously injured”- a track blockage did not necessitate any
action by the flagman. Although the races were open to different types of cars,
there was claimer rule in place such that the engine in a winning car could be
claimed by a fellow competitor for $149.
For 1964, operations at the Marchbanks Stadium facility were
about to take another turn with a new promoter which will be discussed in part three of our story.
