ORIGINAL BUYER was non-paying bidder , so I am relisting this lot of TWO small size metal badges.
NOTE: both are small size , aprox 2" inches across.
one picture with camera flash , other picture without the flash.
original , vintage , from about 1963. Small identification metal participant's id tag or badge , from a former / closed early California race track.
Lot of TWO , both the same , vintage original metal aluminum badges. There are some light scratches to backside of each tag, see scan of backside.
Northwestern National road Races , July 7 , 1963 , Vaca Valley raceway , AFM ? ( Vacaville ? )
Exc+ condition , old stock.
appears to be aluminum , holes on each side , possibly for front grille of the race car ??
smaller size , aprox 2" inches in length. color logo printed on metal
see story below from the Jan 1st , 2014 story run in the Fairfield-Suisun Daily Republic Newspaper , which are two cities next to VacaVille.
scans show front/back. These are smaller thin , light weight collector tag / badges.
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Raceway once made Vacaville a racing town By Ian Thompson From page A1 | January 01, 2014
VACAVILLE -- At one time, race car drivers from as far away as England came to Vacaville to race.
At its height in 1965 and 1966, the Sports Car Club of America held part of its national championship series at the Vaca Valley Raceway, while the roaring thunder of dragsters was a common sound on the weekends, according to race announcer and later co-leasee Jim McCombe.
"We were the first one to use the Christmas tree starting lights (for drag
racing), but we never got the recognition for it," McCombe said.
The idea to build a raceway east of Vacaville goes all the way back to late 1946, according to research done by local historian and Vacaville Heritage Council member Doug Rodgers, who wrote a history of the raceway in the 2011 Solano Historian.
The track was located on vacant land on the northwest corner of Lewis and Weber Road just south of what was then Highway 40.
Rodgers described what remains of the raceway now as little more than "a ghost track" with little more than patches of weed-dominated asphalt, a lonely power pole and a decrepit entry gate.
"It just crumbled away," Rodgers said, adding that almost all of the track was disked under after it was closed to keep local kids from sneaking their cars onto the track for impromptu races.
One has to take to the air or use Google satellite maps to see the discernible outline of the oval track and the drag strip.
The aerial view makes it easy to understand why the drag race organizers had their dragsters race north to south.
McCombe said that if they ran the drag races the other direction, there was a good chance that racers who failed to slow down quickly enough would end up tearing down eastbound Highway 40/I-80, much to the chagrin of more sedate commuters.
McCombe had been working at the track when he was offered the job for $35 "and I was told you could race your own car," McCombe said.
Its promoters in the 1950s said it was the second track in the state to be built for sports car racing and designed in cooperation with the Sport Car Club of America for maximum driver and spectator safety, according to Rodgers.
The track was built by Royce Ratterman, a Richmond contractor, and Harry Burge, a Concord businessman, as an Indy-style 2.1-mile, seven-turn race track which also incorporated a 1.25-mile interior oval with banked turns and a 4,500-foot drag strip on the east side. It was reputed to be one of the first such tracks to have all three in one location
Everything from Indianapolis-style cars, sprint cars and midgets, to dragsters, motorcycles and sports cars from Fords to Ferraris completed at the raceways that also boasted grandstand seating, concession areas and parking for 15,000.
Racing - at least drag racing - was held in the area before the Vaca Valley Raceways was opened, according to Rodgers' research.
Dragsters from as far away as San Diego came up to an abandoned gliderport runways called the Vacaville Drag Strip, where locals raced their drag cars in the 1950s.
Vaca Valley Raceways opened July 5, 1958 on land owned by Durham Jones with two days of sports car road races that were sanctioned.
