SCRA’s Leading Man Revs Up His Farewell Tour
Winning the U.S. Auto Club’s Turkey Night Midget Grand Prix eight times is one of motor racing’s most remarkable achievements, but it has served to obscure the fact that Ron Shuman is one of the finest drivers of non-winged cars in sprint car history.
“The Flying Shoe,” as he has been known since he came out of Tempe, Ariz., 25 years ago to tame racing’s most volatile creature--a 750-horsepower machine that weighs only 1,250 pounds and slides broadside through the corners of dirt ovals.
Shuman, who will be 45 next month, is on his farewell tour with the Sprint Car Racing
Assn., an organization he has dominated since it replaced the California Racing Assn. three years ago.
“I just can’t seem to win enough races anymore,” he said one Saturday night while preparing to hustle his black, No. 2 Skip Schuck-owned sprint car around Perris Auto Speedway, home track of the SCRA.
He many not be winning as much as he’d like, but he’s still running well enough to have won the SCRA championship last season, and is leading this season after 22 races.
“I didn’t have a real good year in ’96 and it got to be where it’s not as much fun as before,” he said.
Shuman won only one race last year--the last of the season at Perris--but it gave him his second SCRA title. And he has won only one of 22 this year, but is leading in points with 1,285 to 1,270 for Richard Griffin of Silver City, N.M., 1,200 for Cory Kruseman, last week’s winner from Ventura, and 1,195 for Rip Williams, a seven-time winner from Yorba Linda.
“I’ve always felt if it’s your turn to win, it’s going to happen,” Shuman said. “Last year was a perfect example. All Richard [Griffin] had to do to win the championship was to start the main event, but he never made it.”
Griffin crashed during qualifying, then got into the team’s backup car--and crashed again in a heat. When track doctors would not allow Griffin to drive anymore that night, Shuman went on to win the main event and the championship.
“Like I said, if you’re supposed to win, you’ll win. If not, you finish back in the pack. That’s the way it happens. Of course, to win a 40-race series like the SCRA, you need to have a lot of luck too.”
Luck, destiny and racing skill might all have been involved, but Shuman’s resume is filled with successes: first driver to win sprint car’s Triple Crown of the Knoxville Nationals, Western World and Pacific Coast Nationals; six-time Pacific Coast Nationals winner; four-time Western World winner; 13 World of Outlaw victories; runner-up by one point for the 1993 USAC Silver Crown championship, and 73 CRA main event victories.
In 1994, he won 12 of 26 SCRA main events and the following year had 22 consecutive top-five finishes before suffering head injuries June 3 at Bakersfield Speedway in the worst crash of his career.
“That was the worst accident I’ve had, but racing has been good to me.” he said. “It’s been my livelihood. A lot of [midget and sprint car] drivers have other jobs, but racing is what I do for a living.”
With Shuman missing several races while recuperating, fellow Arizonan Lealand McSpadden went on to win the 1995 SCRA championship, with Shuman second.
This may be the Shoe’s last year in sprint cars, but he’s holding the door open for other possibilities.
“I’d like a shot at the trucks in NASCAR, or maybe an [Indy Racing League] ride,” he said. “I always felt I came along at just the wrong time to run Indy. The only year I was back there [1980] was when ground effects were coming in and we had an old flat-bottom that wasn’t all that competitive.
“We still felt we’d make the race, but we were next in line on the last day to qualify when it started to rain. We never got a chance.”
That was a tough year for rookies. Also failing to make the 500 were Roger Mears, Tony Bettenhausen and the late Rich Vogler. Shuman got the AMI Award, for Almost Made It.
“If the IRL had come along a few years ago, I’d have jumped at the chance,” Shuman said. “I think it’s great for young drivers.”
Then he added with a grin, “Even old ones.”
Friends who know Shuman best expect him to wind up on the senior golf tour in five years when he turns 50. Shuman, who spends most of his days off playing with pros around Phoenix, is a six handicapper. When the SCRA had two weeks off last month, and many of the drivers raced in Indiana, Shuman headed for Hawaii on a golf vacation.
The high point of his career was winning the Knoxville Nationals, the Indy 500 of sprint car racing, in 1979.
“Everybody showed up at Knoxville, all the champions from all over the country,” he said. “What you did at Knoxville was the gauge of your season. Guys worked all year getting ready for Knoxville, just like guys used to do for Indy. It was really big for me. I won $5,000. Now, the winner gets $100,000.”
Shuman was racing with the World of Outlaws, rubbing fenders with Steve Kinser, Sammy Swindell and Bobby Davis Jr. in winged sprint cars, when he got an offer from car owner Ed Ulyate to stay at home, race wingless cars in the CRA.
“I was getting tired of getting beat up every night,” Shuman said. “Kinser was on a tear, winning something like 14 races in a row before I beat him at Williamsport [Pa.], but I wasn’t winning as much as I liked.”
Kinser, the greatest of the winged-car drivers, has won 14 Outlaw championships.
“When I came home at the end of the ’84 season, won the Western World at Phoenix against all the good guys and then got an offer to run wingless cars with the CRA, I jumped at it,” Shuman said.
Driving a wingless car takes more finesse because the driver doesn’t have a huge billboard-type wing to keep the car’s rear end glued to the track.
“In a winged car, all you do is figure out how to run wide open,” Shuman said. “And if you can’t run wide open, you figure out how you can. That’s what makes Kinser so great, he finds out faster than anyone else.
“Steve also learned from his dad that winning is everything, whether its wrestling, driving a race car or whatever. The guy just smells blood. He can be running fourth all night, looking like he’s going nowhere and all of sudden there he is in front.
“Why? Because Steve Kinser can hold his breath longer and grit his teeth harder than any guy I’ve ever known.”
Back in wingless cars, Shuman won four CRA titles before it became the SCRA in 1993.
“Being able to race at Ascot was a factor in staying home,” he said. “It was one great race track. I told the guys how much they’d miss the place when it was gone.
“I won the last sprint car race there, the Don Peabody Memorial.”
The CRA and then the SCRA struggled without a home track after Ascot was shut down in 1990, but Perris became the headquarters when the track was built last year.
“I’ve raced in just about every facility in the country and there’s no dirt track like Perris,” Shuman said. “Southern California has the two finest facilities in the country now, California Speedway for the big cars on a superspeedway and Perris for sprint cars on dirt.”
JET JAM
Interspersed with such attractions as Willie Nelson, alternative rock and the Slam Bam Beach Volleyball Challenger, this weekend’s Jet Jam in Anaheim will feature a number of jet ski races involving champions of the International Jet Sports Boating Assn. on the Pond and River Complex.
Twenty of the leading riders will compete in three classes--closed course with ramp jumps, oval and dual slalom--to determine an overall champion.
The winner will earn $6,000 from a $33,000 purse. To create a racing facility, 12 million gallons of water will be used to fill a temporary pond in the normally dry Santa Ana riverbed. Racing is scheduled today, Saturday and Sunday, starting each day at noon.
LAST LAPS
Pat Rummerfield, driving an electric car owned by Ed Dempsey of Santa Ana, will try to break the world electric car record of 183 mph next week during Bonneville Speed Week on the salt flats of Utah. Lloyd Healey went 206.516 mph last year, but that speed was not official. . . . Bob Welborn, 69, pole-sitter for the inaugural Daytona 500 in 1959, died last Saturday in Pfafftown, N.C.
Hermie Sadler set a track record for Busch cars in qualifying for Saturday’s Detroit Gasket 200 with a lap of 175.511 mph at Michigan Speedway. . . . Ann Ferrar, who toured the country for six years promoting female motorcycle riders, is this year’s recipient of the American Motorcyclist Assn.’s Hazel Kolb Brighter Image Award. . . . Scott Atherton, general manager of Laguna Seca Raceway since 1993, has been named executive vice president of Nazareth (Pa.) Speedway.
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This Week
WINSTON CUP
ITW DeVilbiss 400
* Where: Michigan International Speedway, 2-mile paved oval, Brooklyn, Mich.
* When: 9:30 a.m. Sunday, ESPN.
* Qualifying: Today-Saturday.
* Defending champion: Dale Jarrett.
* Last week: Jeff Gordon added to his points lead by winning the Bud at the Glen at Watkins Glen, N.Y. It was Gordon’s first road-course victory.
BUSCH GRAND NATIONAL
Detroit Gasket 200
* Where: Michigan International Speedway, 2-mile paved oval, Brooklyn, Mich.
* When: 9 a.m. Saturday, ESPN
* Qualifying: Today.
* Defending champion: Jeff Purvis.
* Last week: Idle.
CART
Texaco-Havoline 200
* Where: Road America, 4-mile permanent road course, Elkhart Lake, Wis.
* When: 12:30 p.m. Sunday, ESPN
* Qualifying: Saturday.
* Defending champion: Michael Andretti.
* Last week: Alex Zanardi took advantage of a tire blowout that sidelined pole starter Bryan Herta and went on to win the Miller 200 at Lexington, Ohio.
IRL
Pennzoil 200
* Where: New Hampshire International Speedway, Loudon, N.H.
* When: 3 p.m. Sunday, Channel 7 (delayed).
* Qualifying: Saturday.
* Defending champion: Scott Sharp.
* Last week: Idle.
CRAFTSMAN TRUCKS
Federated Auto Parts 250
* Where: Nashville Speedway USA, .596-mile paved oval, Nashville, Tenn.
* When: 4 p.m. Saturday, TNN
* Qualifying: Today.
* Defending champion: Dave Rezendes.
* Last week: Ron Hornaday won for the fifth time in six races, outrunning Joe Ruttman and Rich Bickle to win the Stevens Beil-Genuine Car Parts 200 at Flemington, N.J.
NHRA
Champion Auto Stores Nationals
* Where: Brainerd International Raceway, Brainerd, Minn.
* When: 2 p.m. Sunday, ESPN2
* Qualifying: Today-Saturday.
* Defending champions: Kenny Bernstein (top fuel), John Force (funny car), Warren Johnson (pro stock), Matt Hines (pro stock motorcycle).
* Last week: Idle.
