Santa Monica Road Race Course
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 1912 Santa Monica road races[2] | |
| Location | Santa Monica, California |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 34°02′20″N 118°29′17″W / 34.039°N 118.488°W |
| Opened | July 10, 1909 |
| Closed | March 15, 1919 |
| Major events | American Grand Prize Vanderbilt Cup |
| 1909–16 | |
| Length | 8.417 miles (13.546 km) |
| 1919 | |
| Length | 7.36 miles (11.845 km) |
The Santa Monica road race course was an American race track consisting of public roads. Established by a consortium of Southern California auto dealers who sought to promote cars, buying them as well as racing them, at a time when they were rather rare in Los Angeles, the Santa Monica road races lasted for ten years.[3]
An estimated 50,000 people attended the 1909 Santa Monica road races. Harris Hanshue was the winner of the heavy-car division in an Apperson Jackrabbit and Bert Dingley won the lightweight division in a Chalmers-Detroit Forty.[3]
1912 races
The free-for-all race of the 1912 event was won by Teddy Tetzlaff in a Fiat.[2] He was awarded a medal for the win.[4]
Vanderbilt Cup and American Grand Prize
Santa Monica hosted both the Vanderbilt Cup and the American Grand Prize in 1914 and in 1916.[1] A fatality occurred in practice for the 1914 event when a car crashed into the crowd and killed a spectator.[5] The 1916 event was marred by a total of five deaths: After a mechanician had been fatally injured in practice,[6] driver Lewis Jackson and three people lining the road died as a result of a crash during the Grand Prix race.[7]