Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Torrance Mechanic Starts Drive Toward Fourth National Title

David Vegher is an Alfa Romeo mechanic in Torrance who has won three national championships in the Sports Car Club of America driving a 20-year-old green and yellow Lotus Elan.

Each time he won, the SCCA put added restrictions on his equipment for the next season, but each year he prevailed again. Maybe it’s because of the manner in which Vegher wins.

In three 18-lap championship races at Road Atlanta against the best D Production (in 1982-83) and GT-3 (in 1984) amateur drivers in the country, Vegher has led every lap. In 1982, he sat on the pole after setting a qualifying record and won wire-to-wire against a field composed largely of Porsche 924s. In 1983 and 1984, he sat in the front row, alongside the fast qualifier, but both times won the drag race to the first corner and never looked back.

After he had won in 1982, the SCCA reduced the car’s choke intake to cut back on horsepower. After he had won again in 1983, they added 100 pounds to the car’s minimum weight. For 1985 Vegher was moved up to the GT-2 class, where he will race against Datsun 280ZXs, Mazda RX7s and Porsche 916s.

“The philosophy of the SCCA doesn’t make sense to me,” Vegher said. “Instead of trying to make the guys work harder who haven’t done their homework, they penalize the guys who have worked hard to get the most out of their car. It’s crazy, but so far we’ve managed to handle it.”

Vegher and other Cal Club drivers will make their 1985 debuts this weekend at Riverside International Raceway in the opening of the California Cooler national championship series. Points earned in Sunday’s six 30-minute heats will help determine qualifiers for the SCCA nationals at Road Atlanta in October.

“I love to race at Riverside,” Vegher said. “It’s home. It’s where I learned to drive a race car in 1974. I went through the Alfa Romeo Club time trials and then got into vintage racing.”

Vegher, 33, decided in 1981 to make a serious bid at winning a national championship. First, he found a Lotus Elan in Sacramento that had been raced three times and never finished.

“The car was in terrible shape, but I had studied the rule book and felt that with the weight limit and carburetor size, the Lotus could be a winner,” Vegher said. “I drove it in three races to get my national license and won my class at Riverside, Carlsbad and Laguna Seca. Then I took it back to my shop in Torrance and totally redid it. I stiffened the chassis, made the roll cage tie in with the suspension pickup points and got it race ready.”

In the first event of 1982, Vegher and the Lotus broke the track record by six seconds, but lost the race when he had to veer off course to miss a wreck and damaged the suspension. That was the only race he lost, though. He swept the remaining Cal Club events, set a national record in qualifying at Road Atlanta, then won his first championship by holding off John Osteen of Cincinnati in a Porsche 924.

“I got a great satisfaction from winning against Osteen because he had a factory-sponsored Porsche that cost about $75,000, and my total outlay was somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000, and I was just a little one-man operation from Torrance,” Vegher said.

Vegher was named the SCCA’s national rookie of the year.

“I figured it was a one-shot deal,” he said. “I’d proved I could win a national championship and I was ready to quit, but my wife said, ‘Let’s do it again.’ So I did.”

Last year, the SCCA consolidated classes, making D Production part of GT-3. Vegher was further handicapped when SCCA added another 100 pounds to his car.

“The worst thing was when I ran off course at Willow Springs at 120 m.p.h. and tore up the car. I got it back together and we won all our races out here, but when we got to Road Atlanta the favorite was Tom Davey in a VW Scirocco. He had won five nationals and had a bigger engine than we had and after he won the pole, I was nervous as hell before the race.

“I figured I had to get out ahead of him right at the start or I might never catch him, so I dragged him down to the corner and when he crowded down to the inside, I took out around him on the outside. About the eighth lap he started gaining on me, but he missed a shift and broke the gears. After that, it was a cruise.”

Vegher was named SCCA national mechanic of the year after his win because he had done his own work, and later was named Cal Club driver of the year, joining a list that includes Dan Gurney, Kevin Cogan, Dennis Firestone and John Morton.

“It was great, winning those awards, but even though I’m a one-man team, I’ve got five or six guys who come over to my shop two or three nights a week and help me with the car. I couldn’t have done what I have without them.”

SPORTS CARS--Bobby Unser will return to racing Sunday in Miami in the International Motor Sports Assn.’s version of IROC, a 30-mile sprint called the Mazda InterAmerican Challenge. Twenty-two drivers will be in identically prepared Mazda RX7s during the Lowenbrau Grand Prix, with a U.S. team of Bobby Unser Sr. and Jr., Al Unser Sr. and Jr., Randy Lanier, Al Holbert, Tom Sneva, Willy T. Ribbs, David Pearson and Jack Baldwin against a Latin American team of Emerson Fittipaldi, Juan Manuel Fangio II, Roberto Guerrero, Eliseo Salazar, Rogelio Rodriguez, Mauricio De Narvaez and Jacques Villeneuve. A field of 44 GT prototype racers will compete in the $125,000 Grand Prix through the streets of Miami. Channel 34 and Channel 19 (San Diego) will carry the racing Saturday from noon to 3 p.m., and Sunday from 9 a.m. to noon.

MOTORCYCLES--The fifth annual Fudpucker Racing Team’s King of the Desert championship will be run Sunday, northeast of Plaster City in Imperial County. Former national motocross champion Marty Smith is defending champion in the desert race, consisting of five 30-mile loops.

STOCK CARS--Drag racer Kenny Bernstein of Newport Beach and drag strip operator Norman Parah of Dallas have agreed to sponsor the Petty Enterprises Ford in 15 NASCAR Winston Cup races this year with Dick Brooks of Porterville the driver.

COPPER CLASSIC--Postponed two weeks ago by flood waters, the Skoal Bandits Copper World Classic is set for this week at Phoenix International Raceway with championship races in four divisions--stock cars, roadsters, midgets and sprint cars. Qualifying and time trials are scheduled Saturday with finals Sunday.