Prospects for a Memorable ’97 Appear After a Forgettable ’96

Thank goodness it’s 1997. The last year wasn’t a particularly good one for motor racing.

This year, with the opening of California Speedway on the grounds of the old Kaiser steel mill in Fontana, promises to return Southern California to its proper place on the racing map.

Just as the departure of the Rams and Raiders left the area without a professional football team, big league motor racing disappeared after first Ontario Motor Speedway and then Riverside International Speedway shut down a decade or so ago. That will change the weekend of June 21-22 when Roger Penske opens his $75-million track with a 500-mile NASCAR Winston Cup stock car race.

Ontario closed because of gross mismanagement and overspending, Riverside to make way for a shopping mall. Neither is likely to occur at Fontana, where the facility has the backing of Penske’s $3.3-billion company and the direction of Les Richter, for many years the man who managed the Riverside track.

It is fitting that NASCAR will be the first event at Fontana because under the guidance--dictatorship?--of the France family, it has become the fastest-growing and most successful racing organization in the world. The big American-built passenger car look-alikes continued to attract amazing crowds. More than 5 million watched them in person, and TV ratings were up 10% with a viewership of nearly 149 million.

Dale Earnhardt’s hopes of a record eighth title were dashed when he was seriously injured in a midseason crash at Talladega, Ala. He was leading the race and was a close second in series standings. He did not miss a race, but he drove in excruciating pain and finished in the top five only twice in the remaining 13 races.

Terry Labonte had not won a Winston Cup title in 12 years, but he prevailed in a close finish over defending champion Jeff Gordon. Earnhardt came in fourth.

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The Indy car scene was unsettling. Yearlong bickering between factions of the established Championship Auto Racing Teams and Tony George’s new Indy Racing League hurt both sides. In the end no one won, and this year the parting will be total.

CART, which refused to race its star car-driver combinations at the Indianapolis 500 because of restrictive qualifying rules imposed by George, ran the U.S. 500 at Penske’s Michigan International Speedway in direct opposition to the Indy 500. It was a public relations disaster when the self-proclaimed “best drivers in the world” tried to start the race, only to end up in a multi-car crash that delayed the start more than an hour.

Jimmy Vasser, who went on to win his first CART championship, won the race after switching to a backup car when his original was damaged in the prerace accident.

This year, the U.S. 500 will be held July 27 at Michigan, but another race will be held May 24, the day before the Indy 500, at Gateway International Raceway, a new track near St. Louis.

The IRL fared no better, perhaps not as well.

The Indianapolis 500, with a watered-down field because of the absence of Al Unser Jr., Michael Andretti, Bobby Rahal, Robby Gordon and 20 other top-rated drivers, proved to be an exciting race won by Buddy Lazier before a full house, but it was not the same. The electricity surrounding the race and the milling crowds that traditionally swarm around the Speedway for days preceding the 500 were not there.

Ticket scalpers, instead of getting a couple of hundred dollars for a $75 ticket, settled for as low as $20 on race day.

Other races, other than the IRL opener at the new Walt Disney World track in Orlando, Fla., and the season finale at Las Vegas, were neither well attended nor very memorable.

A fallout from the CART-IRL confusion was the loss of two of the brightest young drivers in Indy car racing, Robby Gordon and Tony Stewart, to NASCAR’s Winston Cup series--and the loss of the term IndyCar for CART. From now on, Andretti, Unser, et al., will be driving CART cars, the IRL driving Indy cars.

Last year, comparisons could be made between the two series. This year, it will be impossible. CART will continue to run what were once known as Indy cars--Lolas, Penskes and Reynards--powered by turbocharged V8 engines.

The IRL, with a new set of rules, will offer chassis by Dallara of Italy and G Force of Great Britain with 4-liter non-turbocharged engines built by Oldsmobile and Nissan.

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The year was also a tragic one, marred by the deaths of three popular drivers--veteran Scott Brayton and rookie Jeff Krosnoff in Indy cars and drag racer Blaine Johnson in a top fuel car. Brayton and Johnson lost their lives shortly after qualifying No. 1 at the year’s most important races, the Indy 500 and the U.S. Nationals, respectively.

Drag racing, spurred by the driver-of-the-year performance of funny car champion John Force and his Castrol Pontiac teammate, Tony Pedregon, continued to attract record crowds for record performances.

For the sixth consecutive year, total attendance increased at National Hot Rod Assn. events. Last year, despite rain at seven of 19 stops, 1,869,437 spectators attended national championship drag races. That was more than double the total of 831,000 only a decade ago.

One bright spot on the local short-track scene, still short-handed after the closing of Ascot Park and Saugus Speedway, was the emergence of Perris Auto Speedway as a popular half-mile oval. It became home base for the Sprint Car Racing Assn.--homeless since Ascot’s closing--and a favorite venue for the World of Outlaws sprint cars.

Motorcycle racing, once the staple of Southern California tracks, also suffered. The traditional dirt track Grand National and the poorly attended Superbike race at the Pomona Fairgrounds have been canceled. And the Supercross race at Anaheim Stadium, annually the biggest race on the stadium motocross circuit, has been dropped after 18 years because of Disney’s downsizing of the stadium.

Instead of Anaheim, the Supercross series will start at the Coliseum with two races, Jan. 11 and Jan. 18.

Motor Racing Notes

MOTOCROSS--Jeremy McGrath, the winningest rider in Supercross history, will switch from Honda to Suzuki for the 1997 season, starting with the Coliseum on Jan. 11. McGrath, who won 14 of 15 races and his fourth Supercross championship last year, has been with Honda the last four years. Although he will ride a Suzuki, McGrath allegedly plans to run his own team as an independent contractor.

AWARDS--The American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters will fete their 1996 All-America team Saturday night at Las Vegas Speedway. . . . Also Saturday night, the United States Auto Club will honor its Western Regional champions with a dinner at the DoubleTree Hotel in Ventura.

NECROLOGY--Mark Dees, a noted racing historian and Bonneville Nationals competitor, was killed in a highway accident Dec. 23 along state Highway 126. Dees, 63, wrote the Miller Dynasty, a history of Harry Miller’s Indy car engine building successes, and was a member of the Bonneville 200 MPH Club. Survivors include his mother, daughters Alex and Abby and sister Evelyn. . . . Tommy Francis, a veteran of Carrera Pan Americana road races in the early 1950s, died of heart failure Dec. 6 in Rosemead.