Riverside International Raceway 1980 and 1967

The 1958 United States Grand Prix for Sports Cars was a sports car race held at Riverside International Raceway on October 12, 1958. It was the fourth and final round of the 1958 USAC Road Racing Championship season, the seventeenth round of the

Sports Car Club of America The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) is a non-profit American automobile club and sanctioning body supporting road racing, rallying, and autocross in the United States. Formed in 1944, it runs many programs for both amateur and professional r ...

's Pacific Coast Championship, the second running of the Riverside Grand Prix, and the first post- World War II running of the United States Grand Prix. The race was held over 62 laps of Riverside's circuit, for a total of . Chuck Daigh won the race overall, driving one of Lance Reventlow's Scarab-

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s. The race is also noteworthy in the annals of international racing, as the strong second-place finish by a local driver named Dan Gurney earned him a test drive in a factory Ferrari Formula 1 car, effectively launching the Californian's legendary racing career. The weather at this event was very warm, even for a desert climate that routinely saw daytime temperatures of 100F plus during the summer. On race day the temperature reached an extraordinary high for the era ; with winds gusting up to on race day. Even with the global warming that emerged decades after the late 1950s, the maximum temperature of Riverside, California never exceeded for the month of October 2013.

Entry

The race was open to cars meeting the

's B Modified through G Modified classes. Although named "modified", most of the cars in classes C through G were factory-built sports racing cars. The field was unusually large for an American sports car race, attracted in large part by a large purse consisting of $14,500 ($ in today's money).

Qualifying

Pole position In a motorsports race, the pole position is usually the best and "statistically the most advantageous" starting position on the track. The pole position is usually earned by the driver with the best qualifying times in the trials before the rac ...

winners in each class are marked in bold.

Race result

Class winners marked in bold. *Time of race: 2 hours, 17 minutes, 15 seconds *Average speed:

Support races

Two support races were held: a production car race won by Skip Hudson in a Chevrolet Corvette, and an under-1400cc race won by Jock Ross in a

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References

* * {{S-end United States Grand Prix United States Grand Prix for Sports Cars United States Grand Prix United States Grand Prix Los Angeles Times Grand Prix United States Grand Prix for Sports Cars United States Grand Prix for Sports Cars History of Riverside, California