Elliott Wins Another Stock Car Race; Gant Again Finishes Second

Bill Elliott, taking advantage of a series of late-caution flags, charged into the lead 11 laps from the finish and held off Harry Gant to win the Van Scoy 500 Grand National stock car race at Long Pond, Pa.

Elliott, driving a Ford Thunderbird, crossed the finish line at Pocono International Raceway just 4/10ths of a second ahead of Gant’s Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS. Darrell Waltrip was third and Geoff Bodine fourth, both in Monte Carlos.

It was the sixth victory of the season for Elliott, all of them coming on super-speedways--tracks one mile or more in length.

The 29-year-old driver from Dawsonville, Ga., now has won at least one race on each of the eight super-speedways that the Grand National circuit uses, as well as winning eight of his last 13 tries on the longer ovals.

Elliott averaged 138.975 m.p.h. The average was brought down in the last 25 laps of the 200-lap event by a flurry of four caution flags after the race went 175 laps under the green.

For Gant, it was his fourth straight second-place finish and 24th of his Grand National career.

Defending champions Al Holbert and Derek Bell led from start to finish to win the 500-kilometer International Motor Sports Assn. GT Prototype race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio.

Holbert and Bell, driving a Porsche 962, had nearly a 50-second edge over the 962 of pole-sitters David Hobbs, Bob Wollek and Bruce Leven. The average speed of the winners was 97.988 m.p.h. over the 2.4-mile, 15-turn course. That broke the GT record of 90.477 m.p.h. set by the same team last year.

The win was worth $20,000, and increased Holbert’s lead in the IMSA driver standings. Holbert has finished first four times, second twice and fourth, fifth and sixth once apiece in this year’s nine IMSA races.

Etorphine, a potentially lethal narcotic 10,000 times stronger than morphine, is being used to drug horses and fix races in harness tracks throughout Illinois, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Sunday.

The Illinois Racing Board has documented 19 cases of winning horses being doped with the illegal drug in the last year and a half, and officials fear hundreds of other cases have gone undetected, the newspaper said.

“It would not surprise me to find many more instances of this drug,” said John McDonald, the racing board’s laboratory director.

Wayne Rainey of Norwalk finished 11.93 seconds ahead of runner-up Miles Baldwin of Ontario, Canada, to win the Formula I series event at the American Motorcyclist Assn. racing weekend at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis.

Rainey, on a Honda, averaged 99.154 m.p.h. He also won the Formula II event earlier Sunday.

A Belgian state police report admits a series of mistakes in police handling of the May 29 Brussels Heysel Stadium soccer riot in which 38 people died and several hundred were injured, a leading Belgian newspaper reported.

The tragedy occurred when supporters of England’s Liverpool club charged Italy’s Juventus fans, who were trapped and trampled in a corner of the stadium.

La Libre Belgique quoted Lt. Gen. Robert Bernaert, commander of the state police, as saying in his report to the government and parliament that too few police were inside the stadium, that police officers did not realize fast enough what was happening, did not react in time and did not call for reinforcements.

In addition, Bernaert said part of radio appeals from policemen in the stadium reportedly were not heard by their commanders because of the deafening noise made by the fans attending the European Cup Final.

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Calvin Peete is scheduled to be examined for a chronic back injury today to determine if he will be able to play in the U.S. Open starting Thursday at Oakland Hills in Birmingham, Mich.