Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Despite a Big Season, Ron Esau Wound Up Going 0-for-Saugus

About the only thing in NASCAR’s inaugural Southwest tour that Ron Esau didn’t win last year was a race at Saugus Speedway, that deceptively flat little one-third-mile paved oval in Soledad Canyon.

This Saturday night, in the 1987 stock car season opener for both Saugus and the 15-race Southwest tour, the defending series champion will try to rectify that oversight.

Esau, a second-generation driver from Lakeside, Calif., won at Riverside, Willow Springs, Shasta and Stockton but finished third twice in the two races at Saugus. Both times the winner was Roger Avants of Littleton, Colo.

Esau set a Saugus track record of 73.224 m.p.h. in qualifying for the second race last September, but because Southwest tour races use inverted starts, he started from the third row. Avants, the sixth-fastest qualifier, started on the pole.

“Last year, it was impossible to pass at Saugus because the track was so narrow,” Esau said. “This year, they’ve widened the corners, so it should lead to a more interesting show. I really don’t like Saugus, but I like racing and if that’s where they’re going to race, I’ll be there. As far as being one of my favorite tracks, though, it isn’t.

“All those guys who run regularly at Saugus are good racers. They have to be to race there. They’re always tough when they go to a different track, because after racing on that flat surface, when they get to a banked track, it’s a luxury for them.”

Esau, 32, whose father George and brother Larry were stock car champions in the San Diego area, first drew attention in 1978 when he won the Cajon Speedway championship. In 1983, he moved up to the Winston West series and was Rookie of the Year. Last year, when NASCAR introduced the Southwest tour for Grand American cars, Esau jumped at the opportunity.

He will not be 100% for the first race, the $20,073 Miller 100, Saturday night, however.

During the off-season, while working at his father’s construction business in El Cajon, Esau tripped and fell off a stack of lumber. He landed on his right elbow, shattering it, and the arm was in a cast for six weeks.

“The doctor says it’s healed, but it’s still painful,” Esau said. “It’s pretty tender. It’s only been out of the cast for three weeks and the muscles and tendons are still sore between the elbow and wrist. I’m not getting my full extension. I know the pain is going to bother me, but we won’t know how much until the race.”

Esau tested the elbow two weeks ago at Saugus but only for 25 laps at a time.

“It’ll be something else again to drive 100 laps in competition,” he said.”

Esau will be driving an IROC Camaro, built by Jerry Baxter, for the McDonald’s Racing Team of Riverside. It is the same car he drove last year.

“Last year when NASCAR started the Southwest tour, a lot of guys held back to see what it was like. The series was a success so this year there will be a lot more of them and it will be tougher to win.

“That’s why I want to defend my title against stiffer competition and hope I can attract some sponsorship that will allow me to race back East on the Winston Cup circuit. If you want to be a stock car driver, that’s where you’ve got to go.”

Esau, after two years on the Winston West circuit in 1983-84, briefly tried to test the waters in the South before dominating the Southwest tour last year.

“We missed getting in the show at Daytona by two positions and the next week I crashed at Richmond during qualifying,” he said. “When (car owner) James Hylton said he was renting the car to someone else for Rockingham, I came on home and put together my Southwest tour program.”

The program paid off. In a remarkable display of reliability, Esau completed 1,135 of 1,145 laps in 13 races, won 4, led 8 and was the only driver to finish all 13. He earned $28,864 after ending the season 75 points ahead of veteran Roman Calczynski of Sepulveda.

Avants, 35, an auto technician, admits he was fortunate to win twice at Saugus, but he will be trying for three in a row Saturday night.

“A lot of it was luck,” he said about last year. “It was the luck of the draw and being in the right place at the right time.”

In the first race, Avants was awarded the win when the two front-running cars tangled with three laps to go and Ivan Baldwin, the apparent winner, was penalized and dropped back to fourth. In the second race, Avants led for 94 of the 100 laps, holding off Troy Beebe and Esau in a blanket finish.

Fourteen new drivers are expected to compete for rookie honors in the $275,000 series, including Duke Hoenshell of Orange, who defeated Esau in the season finale last year at Riverside, and Kevin Riniker, another second-generation driver, from Riverside. The entry of 46 cars is exactly double that of last year’s opening race.

Time trials to set the 24-car field will begin at 5 p.m. Besides the Miller 100, there will be competition for street stocks and Figure 8 cars.

SPRINT CARS--Promoter Cary Agajanian is hoping that the third time will be the charm Saturday night when Ascot Park tries once again to complete its first night of California Racing Assn. competition. Two weeks ago the main event was washed out and last week the show was canceled by rain. When Dan Lewis was declared the winner of the Ascot opener on the basis of starting positions in the main event, it was the first win for car owner Bill Pratt since Tony Simon won for him in 1977.

POWERBOATS--The SoCal Speedboat Club will open its fifth decade of sprint boat racing when it hosts the “Thunder in the Hills” regatta Saturday and Sunday at Castaic Lake. Commodore Bernie O’Neil expects 120 entries, headed by the supercharged K boats which attain speeds of 140 m.p.h. on the 1-mile course. Also competing will be three classes of hydroplanes and the Jersey speed skiffs. . . . The Rum Run, a 110-mile ocean race from Long Beach to Catalina and return April 4, will be lengthened to 170 miles to make it an official world championship points race, according to Bob Nordskog, president of the sanctioning Pacific Offshore Powerboat Racing Assn.

MIDGETS--Johnny Parsons, an 11-time starter in the Indianapolis 500, will face local favorites Friday night at Ascot Park in the full midget portion of a United States Auto Club doubleheader. Parsons, winner of 27 USAC midget races, will be driving for Terry Caves, a San Joaquin Valley auto dealer. Robby Flock of Industry, defending Jolly Rancher western regional champion, and Jeff Meyer of Fresno, this season’s leader, are also entered. Meyer took the lead with second-place finishes at both Phoenix and Fresno, where the midget cars raced indoors for the first time in California since 1974. Flock won at Phoenix but did not race at Fresno and is fourth in the standings. Also on the card will be a USAC-sanctioned three-quarter midget race featuring Dennis Hart of Ventura, track champion at both Ascot and Ventura Raceway last year. . . . A similar USAC midget-TQ midget doubleheader will be held Saturday night at Ventura.

OFF-ROAD RACING--Spencer Low, in a four-wheel-drive Nissan V-6 pickup, defeated 69 competitors in the Schevenigen Auto Beach races last weekend before 70,000 fans at Veronica Beach in the Netherlands. The race course was a sandy stretch of shoreline at the North Sea coast resort. . . . The 15th annual SCORE Off-Road World Championship at Riverside International Raceway has been moved to Aug. 22-23, one week later than originally scheduled. . . . The Mickey Thompson Gran Prix traveling circus will be at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis on Sunday. With defending series champion Steve Millen sidelined by injuries sustained in an accident at the Miami Grand Prix, the truck class will feature series regulars Ivan Stewart, Glenn Harris, Walker Evans, Danny Thompson and Al Unser Jr. Millen is recuperating from a broken left leg and broken ribs.

STOCK CARS--Chip Hanauer, five-time Gold Cup champion in unlimited hydroplanes, will make his auto-racing debut April 4 at Evergreen Stadium in Monroe, Wash., during the opening race of the NASCAR Northwest tour. Hanauer will drive a Firebird in as many races as his hydroplane schedule will permit. . . . Hobby and foreign stocks will run Friday night at Saugus Speedway. . . . Don Wright Jr., who won last week’s Winston Racing series feature at Ascot Park while sliding over the finish line backward after colliding with defending series champion Ron Meyer, hopes to repeat Sunday night in a more conventional manner. Meyer will be there, too.

SUPERMODIFIEDS--A USAC championship race rained out last week at Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield has been rescheduled for Saturday night.

INDY CARS--Dennis Firestone, the driver from Yorba Linda who was knocked out of last year’s Indianapolis 500 when an accident on carburetion day destroyed his machine after he qualified it, will try again this year. Firestone, 42, has been entered by Raynor Motorsports of Dixon, Ill., with fellow Indy car driver Phil Krueger, formerly of Anaheim, as chief mechanic.