Riverside set precedent for road specialists of today

Of all the outlandish, harebrained schemes to put your race team back on the map, this one takes the cake.

Imagine a NASCAR team owner, with a proud record of success, looking to make a splash once again for the team and its sponsors. But instead of picking from the deep field of young and hungry local talent to develop into a champion, the team looks overseas for a proven commodity who can make an immediate impact here in the States.

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The plan? Lure a Formula One winner to America and dominate the road-course races. But not wanting to appear too obvious, the team starts its ace on an oval. His first big race? The Daytona 500. His first big NASCAR win? The only California road course on the NASCAR schedule. The year? 1963.

Wait, what?

The team was Holman-Moody. The driver was Dan Gurney. And the track was Riverside International Raceway.

Whether it's Riverside in 1963, or Infineon Raceway in 2007, California road courses have a knack for playing key roles in increasing the depth of NASCAR's talent pool.

NASCAR's first two races at Riverside were held in 1958 and 1961. But it wasn't until the track was awarded a regular spot on the schedule in 1963 that it began to make a direct impact on the sport, the reverberations of which are still being felt today.

Gurney's win signaled the dawn of the road-course specialist era. Though some question the value of ringers today, at the time, such a concept was no big deal. Teams routinely ran abbreviated NASCAR schedules and would cherry pick drivers as the situation dictated. At the time, though, few dared to dream as big as John Holman and Ralph Moody (often) did.

History would show that Gurney's win was no fluke. He went on to win Riverside four more times between 1964 and 1968 driving for the Wood Brothers. Every time he won that race, he won big -- leading the most laps by a crushing margin.

Keep in mind that these races at Riverside were not the sprints that road-course races are today. They were 500 miles long and took about six hours to complete. The cars had no power steering. The drivers had no cool suits. Talk about earning a paycheck.

Gurney's early success sparked other teams to bring in their own specialists from other forms of racing. Throughout the years, racing greats like Bob Bondurant, George Follmer, Al Unser, Roger Ward, Mario Andretti, Augie Pabst, Dick Guldstrand, Al Holbert, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, Bobby Rahal, Willy T. Ribbs and Irv Hoerr have all competed in NASCAR events at Riverside. Legends Parnelli Jones, A.J. Foyt and Mark Donohue have each won a race there.

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Gurney's early dominance, along with the presence of so many greats from other forms of racing, have clearly influenced, inspired and instructed NASCAR's regulars. Without a doubt, they rose to the challenge.

Riverside's winners reads like a veritable list of first-ballot inductees to the NASCAR Hall Of Fame: Bobby Allison (six wins), Richard Petty (five), Darrell Waltrip (five) Tim Richmond (four), Cale Yarborough (three), David Pearson (three), Terry Labonte (two), Ricky Rudd (two), Rusty Wallace (two) Ray Elder (two), plus Benny Parsons, Bill Elliott and Geoffrey Bodine with one win each.

Look all you want. You won't find a track on the NASCAR circuit with a more renowned a list of participants and winners.

With about three entire generations of NASCAR drivers now fully versed in competing on road courses against world-class talent, the impact of these hired guns is not as great as it once was. But road-course ringers still raise the bar for all drivers. We see it 36 weekends a year.

As a result, more people the world over are taking notice of our success. Without it, would Chip Ganassi ever have had a shot at hiring Juan Montoya as a full-time driver?

Montoya's victory yesterday in California is as convincing an argument there is that the occasional importing of talent from outside of NASCAR's traditional feeder venues continues to improve the breed.

It's an embarrassment of riches. And I, for one, hope it continues.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.