Ep. 325 – RE-HEATED: Chris Pook
Dinner with Racers
Dinner with Racers
5.0 • 896 Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2026
⏱️ 117 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The latest of our RE-HEATED series, where we re-issue episodes that might share something with racing stories in the news… Episode 222 featuring Chris Pook. With the Long Beach Grand Prix happening this weekend, we figured it was a good episode to re-visit. A known figure for a number of motorsport ventures, including running CART for some time, Chris’s wild idea to hold a street race in the California port city of Long Beach in 1974 was the start of tradition that continued today. Hailing from the UK and working as a long-time Long Beach resident, Chris’s path to creating the event was anything but smooth, with the detailed story in this podcast. This is of course a complimentary episode to our “Dinner with Racers” video series on MotorTrend’s YouTube and MotorTrend+ streaming, where you can see the story unfold in a two-part special. Lunch was served at 555 East Steakhouse in Long Beach, CA, with the song “I Got Me” by Jane & The Boy taking us out. Thanks again to Continental Tire and Acura for making it all happen.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | September 28, 1975, was, in most ways, just another beautiful day in Long Beach, California. |
| 0:08.0 | The vibrant seaside city with its five and a half miles of beaches along the glistening Pacific Ocean |
| 0:14.0 | was just beginning to come of age as a world-class port. |
| 0:18.0 | But this wasn't just any Sunday. |
| 0:20.0 | On this day, Chris Pook's dream for Long Beach |
| 0:23.4 | was about to come true. Grand Prix racing had come to Long Beach. And now for dinner with racers, |
| 0:31.8 | presented by Continental Tire, with your host, Ryan Eversley and Sean Heckman. |
| 0:36.6 | Play told her radio sound. |
| 0:38.0 | And welcome to another edition of a driver on the radio during a radio. |
| 0:46.0 | What do you think I'm a huge? |
| 0:46.9 | Oh, hey, j. |
| 0:50.2 | Oh, no, oh, oh, you. |
| 0:59.5 | And welcome to another edition of Reheated Dinner with Racer's episodes. |
| 1:00.4 | I'm Sean Heckman. |
| 1:01.5 | I'm Ryan Eversley. |
| 1:06.5 | And as we've said in previous weeks, these are literally the same episodes that you can get in our archives. |
| 1:14.9 | But we figured for the next few months we would put out kind of our old episodes, but with kind of a new spin on topics that might be relevant to the current week that we're in. |
| 1:17.2 | And Ryan, what episode are we doing today? |
| 1:22.8 | Well, today we're going to revisit with Chris Pook, who was one of the founding members of the Long Beach Grand Prix. And the reason we're doing that this week is because when this comes out it'll be the weekend of the |
| 1:27.5 | long beach grand prix which is a huge part of the indy car and sports car series that race |
| 1:33.9 | there every year and so we thought it be appropriate to kind of revisit there we did discuss it a |
| 1:39.3 | little bit unfortunately the passing of jim mccalian a couple weeks ago coincides right before the race that he's most known for. |
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