Off-Road Gran Prix : The Sounds of Baja Return to Coliseum

After an absence of five years, during which he refined the concept of closed-course stadium racing, Mickey Thompson will bring his Off-Road Gran Prix back to the Coliseum tonight for a series of 17 races on a half-mile of dirt laid out to simulate driving conditions in Baja California.

“It will be the best course we’ve had,” said Thompson, who pioneered stadium racing for off-road vehicles in 1979 and 1980 in the Coliseum. “The course is much wider, which should make for more passing, and there are enough bumps, jumps and hairpin corners to test the best of our drivers.”

The course has 6 turns and 19 jumps, one of them off the peristyle end of the Coliseum that will hurl the racers the equivalent of five floors back down to the playing field.

A layer of heavy plastic and 6,500 sheets of plywood beneath the track will protect the football field. In making the track, another layer of plastic--334,000 square feet--was laid atop the plywood and then covered with 10,000 yards of dirt and clay. That is more than 500 truckloads.

The cream of off-road racing is entered, with competition in six classes: Grand National sport trucks, unlimited single seaters, Volkswagen Super 1600s, three-wheel and four-wheel ATVs, Odysseys and the new Uniroyal UltraStock class--a hybrid group of off-road buggies with funny car-like bodies making them look like identifiable cars such as the Fiero, VW Golf, Buick and Firebird.

This will be Round 4 in Thompson’s five-race Gran Prix series. The first two were at the L.A. County Fairgrounds in Pomona and the third in San Bernardino’s Orange Show Stadium. The season finale will be Sept. 14 at San Bernardino.

Two close battles loom in the feature truck and single-seater races. Indianapolis 500 veteran Roger Mears, after winning four straight main events in his Nissan truck, failed to finish at the Orange Show as Jeff Huber won in a Ford. This enabled the Toyota tandem of Steve Millen and Ivan Stewart to move into the standings’ lead. Millen has 144 points, Stewart 134 and Mears 130.

The single-seater class is even closer as Bob Gordon and Al Arciero are deadlocked at 126 points each. Gordon will also be going for the standings lead in the Super 1600 class where he trails Jerry Welchel by 42 points.

Gates will open at 5 p.m., with the first heat at 7.