A Rare Home Game for San Diego’s Least-Known Home Team

DEL MAR —  San Diego has the Padres, Chargers and Sockers and hopes someday to have teams in the National Basketball Assn. and National Hockey League. It wants and deserves everything it can possibly have when it comes to professional sports.

Even now, though, San Diego has more than it realizes it has in terms of professional sports teams.

Very few San Diegans realize the community has an entry in the American City Racing League.

This is understandable, since the initials ACRL do not rank up there in terms of recognition with NCAA, NFL, NBA, NHL, WAC, SDSU, USD, MISL, T of C, USN and MCRD hereabouts. Most folks would probably think ACRL has something to do with America’s Cup.

And it is more understandable because the ACRL is literally and figuratively a road show. Most of the competition is out of the public eye and far from home.

Whoever heard of a home garage advantage?

However, this is “homecoming week” for San Diego’s most anonymous team. The final event of the ACRL season will be part of the program at the Grand Prix of Southern California this weekend at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

“This,” said Margie Smith-Haas, “is the first opportunity for the San Diego public to come out and support San Diego’s team. We’re hoping a lot of San Diego fans will be rooting us on.”

Obviously, Smith-Haas has to be something like a public relations spokesperson or cheerleader or maybe team mother.

Right?

Wrong.

Smith-Haas is not just along for the ride. She is the ride, or at least the driver. She happens to be the leading driver for Team San Diego, ranking seventh overall among 47 ACRL drivers.

At the green flag in the ACRL race, look for her in the red, white and blue No. 96 with “L’Auberge/Del Mar” painted on the sides.

What’s more, note the stars and stripes motif. Team San Diego, which includes three other cars in addition to Smith-Haas’s, looks more like America’s Team than America’s Team ever has. But Smith-Haas insists it is appropriate for San Diego.

“Some of the teams chose the colors of other teams in their cities,” said Smith-Haas, “like the Chargers or Padres or whatever. We thought about what entity did more than any other to put San Diego on the map and we came up with the Stars & Stripes in America’s Cup. Besides, the stars and stripes are very patriotic and the cars look beautiful on the track.”

The cars themselves are not like anything on the streets, not even in name. All cars are Pro Sports 2000s, varying mainly in choice of chassis.

Thus, it would seem that driver skills are magnified in the ACRL series, which speaks well of Smith-Haas’s position among the leaders.

Indeed, she is definitely not a part of the team simply because Paul Haas, the owner of Team San Diego, is her husband. They met, in fact, when both were competing in a time trial 12 years ago in Holtville. She did not get involved in racing as a result of marriage, but rather the marriage was the result of racing.

(Paul Haas, by the way, normally drives No. 98 for Team San Diego, but he is out this week because of a broken foot suffered in an crash last week in Bakersfield.)

Smith-Haas’s involvement in racing dates back to her high school days in Omaha, Neb., when her parents left town for a weekend and she took it upon herself to take the family Buick to the drag races. She didn’t watch . . . she entered.

As might be expected, there have been occasions when Smith-Haas has been made to feel like a bit of an intruder in this seeming bastion of male chauvinism.

As one defeated driver lamented a few years ago: “How do I tell my wife I lost to a woman?”

She found out later that the guy had sold his car and gotten out of racing.

Even this year, she said, there have been a couple of on-track run-ins that had more to do with sexual bias than with running hard in close quarters.

“But,” she said, “we’ve talked those out and let it go with no grudges. When I put on my suit and helmet, I’m a race car driver. Period. No gender.”

The only clue that a woman might be in car No. 96 this weekend would be the “Her’s” painted in blue on a small fin behind the cockpit. That is, unless someone happens to notice that an awful lot of light brown hair is being tucked into that one driver’s helmet in the Team San Diego pit.

And it is appropriate that Team San Diego is led by a woman. After all, Joan Kroc has been leading that other San Diego team for more than five years. There is even precedent in racing, where Fran Muncey was the leading lady of hydroplane racing for years.

So Margie Smith-Haas, the star-spangled lady of the American City Racing League, would seem to be the perfect person in the perfect place.

This week, that place is home.