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In the late 1950's and early 1960's, before
Hawaii Raceway Park came into existence, they raced stock cars in
Honolulu Stadium. It was a multipurpose stadium, used for baseball,
football and track and field events.
The dirt race track ran around the outside of the
football field. The baseball home plate area was in turn three, and
the dugouts were open to the race track. Sometimes cars crashed into
the dugouts.
They ran 1930's vintage Fords and Chevys. The cars
were aligned into three divisions:
- Futurity - no engine modifications
- Sportsman - limited engine modifications
- Modified - unlimited engine modifications
The events they ran were much like they do
today. They started with time trials for each car. Then
they ran trophy dashes for each division. Then heat races,
semi and main events for each division. One difference was
that they used an inverted start, where
the slower cars started in front of the faster cars. That made
for good action as the faster cars moved their way to the front.
Spectators were much closer to the action then
they are now days. The seats were directly behind the outside wall.
There was a red stripe painted on row 5, and you weren't supposed to
sit below the red line. Good thing too, because cars went over the
wall at least twice, tearing down the chain link fencing on top of
the wall.
They had two support vehicles on the infield, a
little jeep for pushing stalled cars off the track, and an old
wrecker, for towing the more badly damaged cars off the track.
The pits were under the stadium seats. You
could hear the modified engines roar during other races.
Some weekends it rained, so the races turned into
mud races. Sometimes they scheduled special mud races, so if it
didn't rain, they had to water down the racing surface with garden
hoses.
Click here to see all
the pictures.
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