After a forty year gap a US Grand Prix returned to the raod racing scene in America, this time with an event at the Riverside International Raceway in southern California. The 1958 United States Grand Prix was an unofficial non-points scoring event that wasn’t associated with, or sanctioned by, the FIA as an official Formula One World Championship event. In fact the event was for sports cars and counted as part of the USAC road-racing championship. It was won by Chuck Daigh driving a Scarab-Chevrolet. Daigh was one of the Scarab engineering crew before stepping into the drivers role. He would go on to compete in six official F1 points scoring GPs during the 1960 season. He remains the last American driver to have won a “United States Grand Prix.”

The Riverside course of the late 1950s was a fast and dangerous course that included a back straight just over a mile long.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 1:35 am and is filed under Sports Cars, USGP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.