The triangular site had the Passaic River on one side, ensuring it was remote from the rest of the township. At 10 acres, it was big enough to fit the track, the stands, the pits and enough parking for everyone. By most accepted estimates, Pine Brook measured one-tenth-mile per lap.
The frontstretch was 100 feet long and 25 feet wide, stretching to 35 feet at both ends. The esteemed owner of midgets and other race cars, Ken Brenn, had his contracting company lay the blacktop.
Pine Brook was the first purpose-built track for TQ midgets and became the ATQMRA’s most prominent stop.
Dick Marlow rented Pine Brook’s bleachers, rather than pay for permanent structures, so the spectator capacity fluctuated. For most of its history, Pine Brook sat 2,500 fans or fewer. Dini inaugurated the buttonhole of a bullring on July 5, 1962, with Hendrickson placing in the top five. Running on Friday nights for most of its lifespan, Pine Brook attracted very strong fields, generally drawing 35 or more cars for a single-division TQ program.
Regular competitors hailed from all over New Jersey plus the historic midget hotbed of Long Island, along with Philadelphia and neighboring southeastern Pennsylvania, all of them hauling long distances along stop-and-go highways to make Pine Brook by race time.
The track was so tight that features were limited to 16 to 18 cars, so qualifying was critical. The usual procedure was to split up the entrants into three heats — which could mean 12-car heats, a daunting prospect in its own right — with six cars transferring per heat.
Those qualified cars then ran in one of two nine-car semifinals, each of which qualified six cars for the feature. Pine Brook would then run one or two consolation races, adding four or six more cars to the feature, plus those already locked in through the semifinals. That meant everyone who signed in got at least two shots at making the finale. There were no time trials, heat lineups were handicapped — the point leader, based on winnings, started the main event 12th.
“When you came to Pine Brook, you learned how to race,” Bob Marlow said. “Many of those features were won from 12th.”
The sheer breadth of Pine Brook’s competitor base is impressive to review historically. Jack Duffy, a New Jerseyan who had careers in both midgets and stock cars, was a regular in the early years. Ed Brunnhoelzel, of the famed Long Island racing clan, had a runner-up finish in 1962. The Brooklyn-born Duncan won a 1967 feature, at the age of 56. Duncan is also Pine Brook’s earliest link to the Indianapolis 500, finishing 31st in 1954, his sole start. He was also an early mentor to Mario Andretti, who first made Pine Brook’s records in the track’s fourth race, where he placed second to DeAngelo.
Andretti’s first Pine Brook win — over Stumpf, who ordinarily hustled modifieds elsewhere in New Jersey at Old Bridge Speedway — came on July 5, 1963. Aldo Andretti had a best Pine Brook finish of second in 1964, aboard a TQ that’s now on display at the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing in York Springs, Pa.
Aldo Andretti was bested that night by Jerry Karl, the New York City native who made 74 Indy car starts, including six at Indianapolis. Longtime CART chief steward Wally Dallenbach’s trail from New Jersey stock cars to five Indy car wins threaded through Pine Brook’s diminutive confines.
Other luminaries dot the participant list, including modified icon Frankie Schneider, open-wheel standouts Johnny Coy, Bobby Courtwright and Joey Payne, plus Lenny Boyd, a latter-day front-runner in both TQs and pavement modifieds.
Dick Marlow leased the property on U.S. 46 and only promoted Pine Brook for its first three seasons. Not wanting to lose the track, the ATQMRA took over promotion beginning in 1965, and made the operation viable, in large part because its members could handle operational duties instead of paid staff. Two years later, Jack Dowie, an ATQMRA co-founder, followed as promoter, with Jack Bellinato presenting races through Pine Brook’s final years.
Pine Brook operated on a year-to-year lease for 28 seasons as New Jersey sprawl enveloped its formerly exurb environs. When the landowner decided to redevelop, Pine Brook’s racing history crashed to a halt. The last TQ feature run went to Dan Clover on Oct. 6, 1989.
“Pine Brook was an intimate place, good entertainment on a small scale,” Bob Marlow said. “Part of why so many of the names who raced there and became well known wasn’t so much for Pine Brook itself, but for what they learned when they were there, which was how to race.”