Featured History Tom Cobbs: Pikes Peak, 1960 Part 4

Absolute gold

 

Cool stuff, thanks again.

 

Love the bug eye Sprite I have a MK ll sprite. Donald Healey was a Guinness, maybe not in the same league as Ferdinand Porsche but he designed and built simple sports cars for the everyday man, easily modified to enhance performance. Keep the stuff coming! Love it.
Dan

 

Would like to see a closeup shot of the front wheels, six lug maybe?

 

Do you suppose they had Chevys' Black Widow manual?

 

Topography is wrong. The hill is at the south side of the fairgrounds has no houses (golf course since the 1920s).
The start/finish line was 1/2 way down the drag strip and they ran toward the hill. Cars turned left at the end of the drag strip and went under the the bridge. The course was laid out in a completely flat paved parking lot. Dodger stadium while still a parking lot had some slight elevation changes and planted areas separating the parking from the perimeter road where they ran the race. It's in Chavez ravine and surrounded by hills and houses,

 

https://library.revsinstitute.org/pomona-road-races/202017
Maybe this is wrong......

 

It would have to be turn 4 taken to the south east to show the houses. If it's 55 it's not Dodger stadium since they didn't move to LA until 58. They've changed the parking lot over the years adding a RV park and they moved the Rail Museum to that lot. The only thing that's still there is the Edison substation (Red square) it's on the track map. I raced my 1/4 midget on asphalt in that lot in 1955/8. They also had a dirt 1/4 midget track on the east side. The lot was always empty on 1/4 midget days so we'd do test/tune speed runs in the whole parking lot - they wouldn't let us near the drag strip.
For the first photo to be correct they would have had to been running the track backwards. I know they did tht sometimes at Willow Springs.
The black "road course" that's laid out now is the LA Sheriff EVOC course. I ran within a second of their instructors record when I was a reserve.

 

The first pic and the 2nd pic (that the Revs Inst indentifies as the LA County Fairgrounds, 6/24/1956) are both running the same way.
https://library.revsinstitute.org/pomona-road-races/202017

This is an aerial of the LA County Fairgrounds road course in 1956 and the corner where these photos were taken is circled in red.....turn 2:

 

May be a then late model Mercedes indepedent rear axle was swapped in. That would explain the Rudge wheels. Just my guess.

 

I came to the same conclusion. It’s odd that the results list Royal’s number as 63…

 

Bingo - Both shots are same corner 2 on track map. In reality they are running the track clockwise for that race so 2 becomes 6. Track map shows original layout to run counter clockwise.

 

Hot rod adjacent: this car was painted by Ken Howard, who was Krause's cousin or brother-in-law (I've seen their relationship documented both ways.)