My chat with racing legend Mel Kenyon

Mel Kenyon is best known for his brilliance as a midget driver, winning 111 USAC Midget races, seven USAC national titles and nearly 400 midget feature wins. It's with good reason he's known as the "King of the Midgets."

Mel Kenyon, left, and Thermo King teammate Art Pollard in 1967 promotional photoBut Kenyon also raced Champ Cars in three times at Hanford Motor Speedway in 1967-68, driving for Fred Gerhardt of Fresno. 

"I thought Hanford was a pretty nice racetrack," Kenyon told me in a telephone interview from his home in Lebanon, Ind. "It was smooth and you could see all the way around it. No trees -- not like Indy, where you can only see a straightaway at a time -- you could see all the way across it." 

Kenyon recalls the 1.4-mile Hanford tri-oval being a challenge to drive, like the similarly shaped Pocono.  

"Set-up was a challenge because of the three corners and the different degrees of banking, Kenyon said. "One was always good, one was medium and one was 'hang on!' " 

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Readers share recollections of racing at Marchbanks, Hanford

Got two emails this weekend from readers with interesting observations of the track as drivers and spectators. 

First was from Bob Dayton, who shared a great story of being a Fresno State student who took a road trip in 1959 that led he and his Porsche 356B coupe to what must have been the brand new 2.5-mile Marchbanks road course. In a series of email exchanges, Dayton wrote:

"It all started at a PCA (Porsche Club of America) meeting one night to go find this 2 1/2-mile high speed racetrack, Marchbanks Stadium. Oren Crumbly wanted to test his tube frame VW & I wanted to try racing the Porsche. Ken, a possible buyer for my Porsche, and I set out for Marchbanks with Oren. ...

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Updates to Marchbanks history

After months of scattered research and a few personal interviews, I just finished a bunch of updates to "History of Marchbanks Speedway, aka Hanford Motor Speedway." 

I've updated the track history in several posts in the Marchbanks section, but needed to add some of that and more to the main history.

Among the changes were to:

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