The first Santa Barbara road races, Labor Day weekend, 1953, stick out as among the best events I witnessed among all the 1950s California races. Really early Santa Barbara included some time trials held at the far west end of the Goleta airport and adjacent, mostly dirt, roads in 1949; Roger Barlow, the Pollack brothers, Phil Hill, Taylor Lucas, John von Neumann and others participated in those trials. Santa Barbara—really the airport at Goleta, some five miles northwest of town—was…
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