Morton, Halsmer Drive to Victory : Swirling Dust and Accidents Mar Grand Prix at Riverside

The Times/Nissan Grand Prix of Endurance was shortened this year from 6 hours to 600 kilometers, which took 3 hours 27 minutes, and it turned out to be a fortunate change.

More than half the 59 starters were out of the International Motor Sports Assn.’s Camel GT race before two B.F. Goodrich-sponsored Porsche 962s flashed across the finish line almost together. Only six of the big 200 m.p.h. GTP prototypes were still running at the time.

It was a home-track win. The two winning drivers, John Morton of El Segundo and Pete Halsmer of Anaheim in No. 68 cut their teeth on the Riverside International Raceway course. So did Jim Busby, the team manager and one of the drivers of the second-place No. 67 car. Rick Knoop, who drove with Busby, lives in Laguna Beach and has driven here often, but learned his trade in Northern California.

Early in the day it was obvious to the 45,960 spectators that the only way to make the race entertaining was for Al Holbert and Al Unser Jr., in Holbert’s Porsche 962, to drop out. They did--for 12 laps to replace a broken turbocharger but after that it was only a question of which white and black Goodrich car would win.

Morton finished 0.138 seconds ahead of Busby, but the third place Jaguar, driven by Bob Tullius and young Chip Robinson, was five laps back.

Sixth, and winners of the GTO class for production cars, were 19-year-old John Jones of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, and 21-year-old Wally Dallenbach of Basalt, Colo., in a Ford Mustang. They were six laps down.

Other class winners were Jim Downing of Atlanta and John Maffucci of Conyers, Ga., in the new Camel Lights division, and Jeff Kline of Malibu and Jack Baldwin of Woodstock, Ga., in Ira Young’s Mazda RX-7 in GTU (for cars with 3-liter displacement or less).

Baldwin, who started in the Mazda, pitted on the first lap with brake problems, but he and Kline caught and passed the other 23 GTU entries.

Lyn St. James and former Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner finished second in GTO and ninth overall.

Holbert and Unser, despite spending 21 minutes in the pits and losing 12 laps while replacing their turbocharger, finished 11th. Before the pit stop, which came on lap 65 of the 115-lap race, they were more than a lap ahead of the entire field.

A warm day and a breeze that continually dusted the 3.25-mile asphalt road with dirt and gravel contributed to the attrition. There were a number of crashes and spin outs as cars slid off the track into the dirt, sending up dust storms that made it like running 200 m.p.h. into a fog bank.

“The track conditions were terrible, with pieces of cars and tires everywhere,” said Bob Earl, driver of a Pontiac Fiero that lasted only 41 laps.

A multi-car accident in the esses between the third and fourth turns sent Lisa Cacares of Tiburon, Calif., and Frank Honsowetz of El Segundo to Riverside Community Hospital for X-rays. Both were released, Cacares with bruises and Honsowetz with a fractured right ankle.

The accident occured when Cary Einsenlohr spun, sending up a cloud of dust that obscured his Nissan 280, which stalled in the middle of the track. Cacares, in a Camaro, and Honsowetz, in another Nissan 280, were following close behind and smacked into the stalled car.

This brought out the pace car and set up one of the strangest accidents of the day. Brian Redman, running in second place at the time behind Holbert, was following the pace car when a BMW ran into the rear of Redman’s Jaguar and broke its cooling system.

John Paul Jr., after starting third and stealing the lead on the first lap from Holbert and Halsmer with a bold move between the first and second turns, spun in Turn 7 and, before he could get turned around, the entire field had passed him. For the next six laps, the Buick-powered March stormed past slower cars at every turn, moving from 52nd to 13th before he stopped.

“All the wiring melted and filled the cockpit with smoke,” said Paul, who had set a qualifying record of 126.824 m.p.h. Saturday. “It got so bad, I couldn’t see any more, so I pulled off. It was an electrical short in the fuel system.”

Halsmer had a narrow escape when a little Porsche 911 ran into him early in the race. It was the second incident involving the 911 and the driver was blackflagged for a warning.

“We’ll have to do a little painting on the left side of our car, that’s for sure,” Halsmer said. “I was so busy trying to keep the car on the road that I didn’t see who hit me. It’s a tough job driving a slower car in a race like this. They have to spend most of their time watching the rearview mirror and it’s hard to run a race that way.”

Busby, the man who put the Goodrich program together late last year, estimated that the “closing rate on slower cars is as much as 80 m.p.h. on a track like Riverside.”

For Morton, 43, it was emotional win.

“I came out here in 1962 to Carroll Shelby’s driving school and drove the first Shelby Cobra ever built. This was a great win for Goodrich, a great win for Busby and a great win for Porsche, but it was the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Morton won two Trans-Am races here and several amateur races at Riverside. It was his sixth IMSA win and Halsmer’s first. Halsmer, too, drove some of his earliest races at Riverside.

“I came to Southern California from Indiana in 1970 and raced here as an amateur for about eight years and won a couple of Formula Vee races,” he said. “I lived in Huntington Beach and I’d work awhile and race awhile until I finally caught on as a professional driver.”

Halsmer will race the Porsche next Sunday at Laguna Beach with the Goodrich team and then head to Indianapolis where he will be Josele Garza’s teammate in a new March for the 500 on May 26.

Busby oversees preparation of the cars in Laguna Beach and uses Riverside as his test track.

“It sure didn’t hurt that all these guys (Morton, Halsmer, Knoop and himself) are local guys who know their way around Riverside,” Busby said. “It’ll be a sad day for me if Riverside ever closes because this track has meant so much to me and to racing, but if this is the last IMSA race here, I’m sure glad we won it. I ran my first year on this track.”

This was the first time in 86 Camel GT races dating back to 1980 that a car with Goodyear tires had not finished first or second. And it was only the third win for a non-Goodyear tire in that period. Wayne Baker, using Firestones, won the Sebring 12 Hour race in 1983 and an all-German team, using Dunlops, won the Daytona 24 Hour race in 1980.

“We had a lot of luck today but we also some great preparation,” Busby said. “This was a remarkable win for such a new team using street-construction radial tires on our race car. I always thought we’d do it, but I didn’t know it would come so soon. It was a tribute to our crews.”

It was not a good day for out-of-the-box cars.

Neither the turbocharged Nissan GTP of Don Devendorf nor the Ford Alba of Jim Trueman even started the race. Both cars, which had never raced before, had gear box problems during morning practice and were withdrawn.

The turbocharged Toyota Celica prepared by Dan Gurney and All American Racers in Santa Ana lasted only 10 laps. It was the second car out of the race, outlasting only John Paul Jr.’s Buick.