THE YEAR OF THE OLD SPORT : Life in Fast Lane a Breeze for These Senior Drivers

T he older they get, the faster they get.

That was the case in the year of motor racing for 1986.

Hershel McGriff won the Winston West stock car championship at age 58, beating a college student of 23 for the title. Don (Big Daddy) Garlits, 54, became the first top fuel drag racer to exceed 270 m.p.h. in a quarter-mile from a standing start.

Bobby Allison and Johnny Rutherford, both 48, became the oldest drivers ever to win a race in their specialties when Allison won a 500-mile stock car race at Talladega and Rutherford won the Michigan 500 for Indy cars. Dick Simon, 53, became the oldest driver in the history of the Indianapolis 500. A.J. Foyt, 51, ran in his 29th Indy 500. Richard Petty, 49, drove in the 1,000th race of his NASCAR Grand National career.

And, Paul Newman and Jim Fitzgerald--both in their 60s--were teammates on the Newman-Sharp team in the Sports Car Club of America’s Trans-Am and GT-1 series. Newman won a Trans-Am and he and Fitzgerald finished one-two in the SCCA GT-1 national championships at Road Atlanta.

None of them appear ready to quit, either, as the 1987 season approaches.

“Quit? You mean retire?” McGriff said, repeating the question incredulously. “My goodness, I don’t know why I should. I seem to be doing all right and I’m enjoying myself. I’m just going to run until I feel like not running any more. When I do quit, it’s going to be as big a surprise to me as it will be to you.”

HERSHEL McGRIFF

The West Coast championship was the first for Hershel McGriff in a career that dates back to Sept. 16, 1945, when he drove his father’s car in a race on the dirt at Portland Speedway.

“Winning the championship was more gratifying because I kept reading about how I’d never won one,” McGriff said. “It was kind of like a sigh of relief to get it behind me. I’ve probably had better years, like when I was running down South in 1954 on the dirt against Lee Petty, Curtis Turner and Junior Johnson, or in ’72 when I won 12 races and lost to Ray Elder who only won 7.”

In 1954, McGriff left Oregon to go Grand National racing with NASCAR, but the season was half over when he arrived. In 17 races, he won 4 and finished 6th in points.

“If I had scored as many points in the races I missed as I did in the second half, I’d have won the championship going away,” McGriff said. “In the last six races, I won three and Lee (Petty) won three and when we didn’t win we were second.”

Petty won the championship and McGriff retired for 13 years while he raised a family and built a million-dollar lumber business in Bridal Veil, Ore. In 1969, he resurfaced at Riverside in the Permatex 200 late model sportsman car race. Although he started last in a field of 41, he passed 17 cars on the first lap, 11 more on the second lap and won the race.

In 1972, driving a car owned by Richard Petty, McGriff won 12 Winston West races, including one stretch of six in a row, but finished second to Elder in points, 2,782 to 2,742, when his Plymouth failed to finish in the final race.

McGriff says the biggest thrill of his career, though, happened 36 years ago.

“Nothing yet has topped winning the Mexican road race,” McGriff said of the inaugural Pan-American race in 1950 that ran the length of Mexico from Ciudad Juarez on the United States border to El Ocotal, on the Guatemala border. “We drove an Olds ’88 and took 27 hours 34 minutes and 25 seconds. I know exactly how long because we only won by 76 seconds after all that way, 2,178 miles to be exact. It was all on the new Pan-American Highway except the last 200 miles and that was all dirt. It was like finishing a stock car race with an off-road race.”

McGriff and co-driver Ray Elliott, a Portland policeman, drove a car that Ray Sundstrom purchased for McGriff to use in short-track races around Oregon and Washington.

“When Sundstrom was off getting the car, we saw an ad in the paper about the Mexican race. When he got back, we already had a sponsor that covered the entry, so we took off for Juarez. We didn’t have any crew, any support vehicle, nothing. We took out the back seat to store tires and gasoline. That’s all we had.”

After winning, McGriff drove the car to Mexico City where he collected 150,000 pesos from the government, which financed the race to publicize opening of the highway.

“That was about $17,000 at the time, which was a heck of a lot of pesos,” McGriff said.

While in Mexico, McGriff met Bill France, president of the fledgling NASCAR stock car organization, and France invited him to come to Darlington, S. C., in September for the first superspeedway race.

“I drove the Olds, the same one we drove in Mexico, from Portland to Darlington, took the headlights off and drove in the race. No one had special tires for the banking and tires were blowing out all day from the high speeds we weren’t used to. I’ll bet we changed 11 or 12 tires by hand with a lug wrench. We didn’t have air wrenches then.”

McGriff finished ninth. Then he drove the Olds back home to Oregon.

“I think one of the nicest things that ever happened to me was winning the most popular driver award the last four years. It really makes you feel good to know that a large percentage of the fans think enough of you to cast a vote.”

McGriff hopes to drive a Pontiac again next year for car owner Gary Smith with Ivan Baldwin setting the car up and directing the crew at the track.

“I keep worrying that some Eastern team will grab Ivan because he’s one of the best. I’d also like to run four or five Winston Cup short track races during the year, but it’s hard to find a sponsor when you don’t know when or where Winston West is going to run. I don’t know when the schedule is coming out.”

In the meantime, McGriff keeps working at dismantling copper mines, refurbishing the equipment and selling it off. He has leased his lumber mill in Bridal Veil and is living in Green Valley, Ariz., about 20 miles south of Tucson.

“Green Valley’s a nice place to live, it’s mostly a retirement community,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean me,” he added, laughing.

How much longer does McGriff hope to race?

“The folks at Darlington want me to drive in their 40th anniversary race. I’d be the only one left still racing. I told them that I’ll probably be there.”

That, of course, would be 1990.

PAUL NEWMAN AND JIM FITZGERALD

If you think Paul Newman looked sharp as a 61-year-old pool hustler in “The Color of Money,” you ought to see him behind the wheel of a race car.

There are no cuts, retakes or scenes that end up on the cutting room floor when Newman climbs into his Nissan Turbo 300ZX and drives in the SCCA’s Trans-Am championship against such talent as Indy car drivers Pete Halsmer, Chris Kniefel and George Follmer, 24 Hour of LeMans winner Klaus Ludwig, veteran Elliott Forbes-Robinson and youthful Trans-Am champion Wally Dallenbach Jr.

It’s all for real.

Newman became the oldest driver to win a major professional race in this country when he won the Lime Rock Trans-Am last August. Later he and Fitzgerald, the 1984 GT-1 champion, put on a battle of their own to dominate their class at the SCCA runoffs in Road Atlanta for the second year in a row.

“Paul is quicker than ever,” lauded his car owner, Bob Sharp, himself a former national road racing champion. “His reflexes, eyesight and nerve have never been sharper. Most particularly his reflexes. There’s no reason he can’t keep on racing at this level as long as his reflexes don’t slow down.”

Racing-wise, Newman is a relatively young driver. He didn’t drive a race car until he was 47.

“I’ve always said when I get slower, I’ll quit racing,” Newman said. “That hasn’t happened yet. I don’t want to quit because after all those years I discovered that auto racing was the only sport that I was graceful. I was a terrible football player, wrestler, boxer, skier. I was even a bad dancer. Racing is what I should have been doing a long time ago.

“I think the key to how long I can drive is staying healthy. As long as I’m in good physical condition, I can drive.”

Newman runs every morning in the pre-dawn so that he can finish before people are around to bug him. He also does a minimum of 40 pushups daily.

“This year I got hurt for the first time since I started racing,” he said. “I found out that older bones are more brittle and don’t heal as quickly when something happens.”

Newman injured his wrist in an accident during a Trans-Am race at Sears Point. His explanation: “A guy I’d passed a couple of times wanted to get hit and I obliged him.”

Surprisingly, Newman feels that acting and racing are complementary.

“They have both helped my concentration,” he said. “It takes great concentration to run consistently lap after lap as well as saying a line in a film convincingly. I’ve learned from both.”

Newman was talking to a reporter about driving at Road America when his sexagenarian sidekick, Fitzgerald, came within earshot.

“There’s lots of time to relax here because of the long straightaways,” Newman said.

Fitzgerald broke in: “Listen to this guy. He’s talking about relaxing at 165 m.p.h. How old is he, anyway?”

Fitzgerald, 64, conducts a driving school at Atlanta when he’s not racing.

“I peaked at 60, then leveled off,” said Fitzgerald, who has won more races than any driver in SCCA history. “Age is relative to what one is doing. If you think you’re old, you’ll feel old.

“Half the battle, when you start adding up the years, is that we don’t have to stand up. In stick and ball games, reflexes have to be physical. Hand-to-eye coordination is combined with running. In a race car, you’re sitting down and your reflexes are mental. There’s no physical ability needed in turning a wheel left to right, or moving the shift lever back and forth. Driving is a mind game.

“The one thing that is more difficult as you get older is your commitment to racing. As life grows older, life is supposed to be sweeter, and racing is sweet for me.”

Newman’s pace the week he won the SCCA championship would have worn out men half his age.

He spent two days early in the week touring with Tom Cruise, promoting “The Color of Money.” Then he flew to Atlanta, where he qualified on the pole with a Road Atlanta track record of 107.60 m.p.h. After that he returned to New York to direct his wife, Joanne Woodward, in her new film, before flying back to Atlanta for the 45-minute championship race.

“Winning was a nice way to relax,” he said. “Fitzy made it pretty exciting by passing me a couple of times. He really made me work.”

As for the youngsters he and Fitzgerald raced in Trans-Am, such as Dallenbach, 23, and Kniefel, 25, Newman said: “We plan our strategy for later in the race. We wait for the younger drivers to fade.”

RETIRE ISN’T IN THEIR VOCABULARY

The most persistent question asked Bobby Allison, Johnny Rutherford, A. J. Foyt and Richard Petty is when they are going to retire. None of them like the question because they all claim it’s not in their immediate future.

“When are you guys going to quit asking me that question?” an irritated Foyt said at Miami last month where he was finishing his 29th consecutive Indy car season. “When I quit, I’ll just drive into the pits, take off my helmet and walk away. You’ll know it the same time as I do.”

Petty, who has driven in NASCAR for 29 years, says he wants one more Winston Cup championship, which would be his eighth, before he stops racing.

“I’ve been asked when I was going to retire for more than 10 years,” Petty said. “I didn’t have an answer then and I don’t have one today. I still enjoy it. I still want to climb behind that wheel every Sunday. In fact, that is my time. That is when Richard Petty only has to worry about Richard Petty. That is my time to do what I want to do.

“And I can still win races. As long as both of those are still the case, then I will continue to race. Plus, I want to win one more championship before I hang it up.”

Allison, who enjoys driving so much that he often runs short-track races when there is no big race scheduled, sees no reason to quit when he’s still winning.

“I think I go as fast and into a tight spot as quick as I ever did,” Allison said. “The only difference is now I think I know how to make it through it. If I win the Winston million (a bonus for winning three of four superspeedway races) and another championship, maybe I’ll think about retiring. Maybe.”

Rutherford, who drove his first race in 1959, has the same attitude.

“The only time I think about retirement is when someone asks me about it,” said Lone Star JR. “I do what I love to do and I’m enjoying it as much as I ever did. Wouldn’t it be stupid to quit? How many people do you know that are doing what they love to do?”