MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : Different Track, Same Goal for Fox, Lewis

Stan Fox and Steve Lewis won the last Turkey Night Grand Prix midget race held at Ascot Park last Thanksgiving. Now they want to win the first one at Saugus Speedway next Thursday night.

Fox, 39, is one of a small group of drivers making a living by racing midgets, traveling around the country from his home in Janesville, Wis., in search of big purses for the little cars. Fox also drives in the Indianapolis 500, but like Costa Mesa’s Sleepy Tripp, midgets are his game.

Lewis, 49, a Laguna Beach publisher and trade show entrepreneur, owns the midget cars that Fox and others drive. For the last 13 years he and Fox teamed with one major purpose in mind--to win a Turkey Night Grand Prix at Ascot. Last year, in their last chance, they did it.

“The entire focus of our 1990 season was to win that race,” Lewis said. “When Stan took the checkered flag, it was like winning the Indianapolis 500 to me. It was the happiest I’d ever been in my life.”

Fox faces quite a different task in preparing for Saugus, a third-mile paved oval with almost no banking, than he did for Ascot and its half-mile of dirt. Ascot was closed and demolished after last year’s race to make way for industrial development.

“Saugus is a tight little track, almost like one of the indoor tracks,” Fox said after testing there for the first time last week. “It will be by far the slowest track we run, so driver finesse will be very important. If you miss the groove by half a car width, you’re in the marbles (loose gravel), and with so many cars on such a tiny track you’ll have trouble staying in the groove unless you’re in front.”

Twenty-six cars will start the 100-lap race on Thanksgiving night.

“I expect to see cars being lapped in 10 laps,” Fox said. “It’ll be a nightmare for the drivers, but it should make for a great spectator race.”

Lewis had a car built especially for Saugus. It is lighter and more maneuverable than the one Fox drives in other United States Auto Club races.

“It will look the same, white with No. 9 on the sides, but it’s a little smaller so we can get around Saugus a little easier,” Fox said. “The smaller track is a great equalizer, so we need every edge we can get. The key may be in qualifying. Even though there are 100 laps, it will be critical to start up front.”

Lewis’ cars, built by Bob East, a former California Racing Assn. sprint car driver, are called Beasts. Earl Gaerte builds the engines--four-cylinder, 163-cubic-inch aluminum-block power plants.

“This will be a tough race because it not only has all the USAC national guys, with Stevie Reeves and Mike Streicher fighting for the championship, but it also has Sleepy (Tripp) and the Jones boys and the other West Coast guys,” Fox said.

Reeves, who will drive Lewis’ second car at Saugus, has a 12-point lead over Streicher. Both will also be in points races Saturday night at Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale and Nov. 30 at El Centro.

“Tripp and I go back so far it’s like a traditional rivalry between us,” Fox said. “When I started racing USAC in 1975 and ‘76, he was the national champion. That was before he decided to stay home and race on the West Coast. Next month, we’re both going to New Zealand together to race.”

Tripp has won six western regional championships, including this year’s.

“The ones to watch, though, might be P.J. and Page (Jones),” Fox said. “You know what P.J. did last year, and Page has won six races on the pavement this year.”

P.J., eldest son of former Indy winner Parnelli Jones, led the Ascot finale for 50 laps before Fox took the lead. Jones finished second. Last week, Page won both the midget and three-quarter features in a USAC show at Ventura.

Fox has some West Coast background. He drove his first race in a midget at the old Corona Raceway when he was 20 and a student at Arizona State.

“I had been a fan of Jimmy and Danny Caruthers when I was growing up in Wisconsin, and I’d always wanted to drive a race car,” Fox said. “I went to Arizona State because I had spent four years in a military school, and I wanted to go where the weather was warmer. The first time I saw the campus was the day I enrolled. In fact, I’d never been in Arizona before.

“I drove a midget for Don Edmunds in that first race, and for the rest of the year I went to school weekdays and headed for Southern California weekends. I raced at Corona, El Toro, Chula Vista, San Bernardino, Speedway 605 (in Irwindale), every place midgets raced.”

Fox has won 16 USAC midget main events, including three this year at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

Although he has driven about every type of open-wheel car and also ventured into stock cars last month, Fox plans to maintain his Indy 500 and midget program next year.

“Indy is enough (or that type of racing). It pays well, it’s a lot of fun and I enjoy it, but the way the rules are now it doesn’t make sense to run the other races,” he said. “The only concession I made to (Indy car owner) Ron Hemelgarn is that I won’t drive in any other race between the Cooper Classic in Phoenix in February and the Indy 500.”

Last May, Fox drove a Lola-Buick to eighth place, the highest finish of the 10 Buicks in the 500.

Motor Racing Notes

HONORS--Michael Andretti, the Indy car champion, was a unanimous selection in voting for the 25th annual driver-of-the-year award. Michael’s father, Mario, was the first recipient in 1967 and also won it in 1978 and 1984. Harry Gant finished second in the balloting, followed by Dale Earnhardt, Joe Amato, Geoff Brabham and Davey Allison.

Michael Andretti also was named to the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters’ All-American team. The team: Andretti and Rick Mears, Indy cars; Earnhardt and Gant, stock cars; Brabham and Scott Sharp, road racing; Amato and Darrell Alderman, drag racing; Steve Kinser and Jeff Gordon, short tracks; and Pat Austin and Roger Mears, at--large. The 12 will be honored Jan. 4 at an awards banquet in Burbank.

VINTAGE CARS--Phil Hill, America’s first Formula One champion, will be honored Saturday night at a celebrity dinner in the Palm Springs Convention Center during the seventh annual Palm Springs Road Races weekend. Eight races will be run Sunday over a 1.3-mile course in front of the Wyndham Hotel. Carroll Shelby, who has not raced for 25 years, is entered in one of his personal 427 AC-Ford Cobras, according to his manager, Lew Spencer.

MOTORCYCLES--The American Motorcyclist Assn. will name its athlete of the year at an awards banquet Saturday night at the Holiday Inn Crowns Plaza in Redondo Beach. Nominees are Scott Parker, winner of his fourth consecutive Camel Pro Series dirt track championship; Jean-Michel Bayle, winner of every AMA motocross championship this year; Wayne Rainey, two-time world road racing champion; Jim Filice, national 250cc road racing winner; and the three-member American team of Jeff Stanton, Mike Kiedrowski and Damon Bradshaw, which won the Motocross des Nations title. Stanton won last year and Parker in 1988.

The Speedway Fall Classic, featuring overseas riders such as Rick Miller, Billy Hamill, Greg Hancock, Ronnie Correy and Dukie Ermolenko, will be held Friday night at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. . . . Most of the same speedway riders will be at Glen Helen Park near San Bernardino on Saturday night for the season finale. New Zealand sidecars will perform both nights.

OFF-ROAD--The High Desert 250, a double points race of La Rana Desert Promotions, is scheduled this weekend at Lucerne Valley. . . . Las Vegas Speedway will attempt to revive the Mint 400 name with a closed-course program Saturday and Sunday by that name. Racing will be over a 2.6-mile layout in and around the oval track. . . . A combined motocross and dune buggy program will be held Saturday night at Ventura Raceway.

SPRINT CARS--Ron Shuman capped his fourth consecutive California Racing Assn. championship season by winning the final event, the Dave Sanborn Classic, at Bakersfield Speedway. Jimmy Sills won the other half of the Sanborn weekend, at Hanford, when the race was stopped after only eight of 30 laps because of an 11 p.m. curfew. . . . The CRA membership voted, 264-49, to change from a nonprofit to a profit organization. Ten investors, at $25,000 apiece, will take over the CRA next season with an eye toward increasing purses through better marketing and public relations.