It would have been nice to get some credit ...

Hanford Sentinel "Hanford History" article posted Dec. 14, 2013... for this short Hanford Sentinel story on the Marchbanks track posted Dec. 14. 

Two things bother me about this piece: 1)They cut and pasted my work without appropriate credit and 2) The Sentinel has all but ignored the track's history over the last few decades. 

Equally annoying is that even though there's only slight rewriting of my original work, they've slapped their own copyright notice on the story and are offering the Indycar photo reprint for sale. All of my work is published under a Creative Commons license that allows others to "copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially" as long as the work is attributed" ... "You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. ..."

This photo The Sentinel posted with the article is apparently of Darlington Raceway, reader Jim Thurman noted in the comments of this post.I published my stories under Creative Commons rather than traditional copyright because I pursued this as a collaborative endeavor and included a lot of other sources, particularly quotes from fan forums. That's why I have so many links to third-party sites to give credit where credit is due.

My frustration is magnified because at the beginning of this Marchbanks project I tried several times to talk to editors at The Sentinel, with no response. My original idea was to pitch a history project for them to pursue and publish, and offer my help if they wanted/needed it. Not that I'm anything special, but it'd be nice if the hometown paper were to invest a little bit in telling the story of this memorable track. The Marchbanks history retains high interest among many people -- I  know because I continue to get lots of traffic to my stories, years after they were first published. This isn't the first time my Marchbanks stuff has been republished verbatim elsewhere. But it's the first time an entity that should know better isn't following pretty basic rules for crediting creative work. 

OK, on the plus side, the Sentinel piece included a photo I have never seen that shows the track from the entry into Turn 1. The caption doesn't provide details, so I'll try to dig deeper. But the presence of what appears to be infield seating would indicate it likely was one of the NASCAR Grand National races. Any of my readers have any idea when this photo was taken?

Update on Sunday, December 22, 2013 at 4:59 PM by Logan Molen

Reader Jim Thurman posted a comment to this post indicating the photo of the stock cars barreling through Turn 1 is in fact of Darlington Raceway, not Marchbanks, as The Sentinel story suggested.

I've updated my original post to reflect Jim's information.

And the search for good photos from any of the Grand National races at Marchbanks continues.

Updates to Marchbanks section

It's been awhile since I've added anything to the Marchbanks section but I did update a few chapters today. 

I updated and tweaked a few sections within the main history, including adding an interesting track diagram and a photo. I also learned the YouTube video of the 1968 Champ Car race has since been taken offline, so I updated that chapter as well as the main history to reflect that. Bummer. 

Let me know if there's other stuff I need to address. 

Sept. 1960 road race program

I recently purchased a program from the Marchbanks Road Races (PDF download) held Sept. 17-18, 1960. This was the first road race at the newly rebuilt and renamed Marchbanks Soeedway (formerly Marchbanks Stadium). 

The race calendar included a variety of production classes, formula cars, motorcycles, modifieds and two "ladies" races. 

The most valuable bit of info in this program is a detailed diagram of the nine-turn, 1.8-mile road course. This is the first "official" diagram I've seen that details the banking in the three turns. Not the extremely sharp hairpins in the infield and front straight (you can see images of that view here).

The road racers ran the course clockwise (the oval drivers counterclockwise). With those differences in mind, I'll use geographical references to describe the turns:

• The 222-foot radius southern turn (Turn 1 on the oval track) was banked at 22 degrees
• The 476-foot radius northeastern Turn 2 was also 22 degrees
• The northwestern turn (Turn 3 on the oval) was 18 degrees in the tight 282-foot radius on the eastern side and 17 degrees on the western 470-foot radius.

NOTE: The PDF contains two copies of Page 3. A postcard from the California Sports Car Club was taped to the page, and rather than peel it off and damage the page, I've left it on and scanned versions with the card on the page and pulled up. And it's that adhesive tape that caused the yellowing of the track map on Page 4.