Road Circuit
Located next to the 1/2 Mile Oval was the Augusta International Raceway 3 Mile road circuit. This former track is currently being developed into the 300-acre (1.2 km2) Diamond Lakes Regional Park.
The "Augusta 510" was run on November 17, 1963 at the road circuit with a noon start time and a 5:00 PM end time. The race actually covered 417 miles (671 km) because of the time limit.
This event was the second race of the 1964 season for the Grand National Division of NASCAR which was later to become the Winston Cup Division and then Nextel Cup. The preceding race was held at Concord Motor Speedway and the following race was held at Jacksonville, Florida. Glenn "Fireball" Roberts was the winner of the "Augusta 510" and he would die later that season as the result of burns suffered at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He was driving a 1963 Ford and this would be his last win.
The pole sitter was Fred Lorenzen with a speed of 89.545. He would only run 12 laps before engine failure forced him to retire. Lorenzen, Roberts and sports car star Dave MacDonald were teammates for the Augusta 510 and MacDonald’s 2nd place finish gave Holman Moody the top two spots. Weldon Adams would finish last after completing only 2 laps due to an atrocious tumble. Wendell Scott would finish 18th. He would win the next event in Jacksonville becoming the only African American to win a major NASCAR race. His feat has not been duplicated in 43 years. 36 cars started the race and 16 cars finished. The event lasted for four hours and fifty minutes and the average speed was 86.32 miles per hour (138.92 km/h). There were 10 lead changes during the event and Richard Petty led the most laps (56). The total purse for the event was $50,620. The expected turnout was to be 75,000 fans. Only 15,000 actually attended.
The "Augusta 510" was the second race of the 1964 season. Six of the top seven finishers: Glenn "Fireball" Roberts, Dave MacDonald, Joe Weatherly, Billy Wade, Larry Thomas, and Jimmy Pardue would lose their lives before the next racing season. The seventh driver was Ned Jarrett.
On March 1, 1964 the United States Road Racing Championship (USRRC) held two 150 mile events on the road course. Dave MacDonald won the first race in a King Cobra, Jim Hall was second in a Chaparral 2A and Bob Holbert was third in another King Cobra. Ken Miles and Dave MacDonald finished 1-2 in Cobra Roadsters in the afternoon race. Dave would lose his life a few weeks later at the Indy 500.
Read more about this topic: Augusta International Raceway, History
Famous quotes containing the words road and/or circuit:
“Evil can be got very easily and exists in quantity: the road to her is very smooth, and she lives near by. But between us and virtue the gods have placed the sweat of our brows; the road to her is long and steep, and it is rough at first; but when a man has reached the top, then she is easy to attain, although before she was hard.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)
“We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited.... It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)