Motor Racing / Shav Glick : USAC Champion Should Feel at Home at Ascot

Sprint cars, the closest thing there is to old-time front-engine Indy cars in which the driver sits upright, are divided into two categories--winged, with monstrous 5-foot by 5-foot billboards sticking up in the air, and wingless.

The World of Outlaws and all but two racing organizations in the country race with wings. Their world is dominated by Steve Kinser of Bloomington, Ind., six-time World of Outlaws champion, and Doug Wolfgang of Sioux City, S. D., winner of a record 55 of 112 races this year.

Wingless sprint cars are the province only of the California Racing Assn.--whose home track is Ascot Park--and the U.S. Auto Club.

This weekend Ascot is playing host to the $70,000 Pacific Coast Nationals, which concludes Saturday night with a 50-lap main event on the half-mile dirt oval. The races will be wingless.

King of the wingless cars is Ricky Hood, a 33-year-old second-generation sprint car driver from Memphis. Hood has won the last two USAC championships and this year has clinched the USAC/CRA Challenge series that pitted the best of USAC against the best of California. The 12-race series concludes Friday night, but Hood won the title last week in Phoenix with a sixth place in a race won by Bob East.

Hood also won his first USAC Silver Crown dirt-track championship this season, becoming the first to win the sprint car/dirt-track double in the same year. His consistency in sprint cars has been remarkable. In 24 races, he has 9 wins, 5 seconds, 3 thirds and has been out of the top 10 only once. That was at Ascot on March 16, when he was 14th.

Hood missed last year’s Pacific Coast race because of a freak accident in the pits at Phoenix a week earlier. He was standing in the infield when a car went out of control, careened off the track and hit Hood, breaking both legs and hospitalizing him on and off for two months.

Hood’s father, Clarence (Hooker) Hood, was a legendary sprint car driver around the Memphis area when Ricky was growing up.

Many of the Outlaws will be at Ascot, too, but with their huge wings missing. Kinser, who won last week’s Western World championships at Phoenix, is looking for his first Pacific Coast win after finishing second four times--to Buster Venard in 1978, Dean Thompson in 1982, Ron Shuman in 1983 and Bubby Jones last year. All but Venard are racing this week.

Jones, who has not had a good year since winning the Kraco-CRA championship two years in a row, will be back in his old Gas-Chem ride.

Wolfgang, who competed mainly in Pennsylvania instead of running for the World of Outlaws championship, has had the hottest year in sprint car history. His 55 feature wins broke the record of 45 set by himself in 1977 and equaled by Kinser in 1982. During one stretch last summer, Wolfgang won 17 straight main events.

Thompson, who won in 1979, 1980 and 1982, and Shuman, the winner in 1976, 1977 and 1983, will be trying to become the first four-time Pacific Coast winner.

Three nights remain in the Pacific Coast Nationals, which opened Wednesday night. Tonight’s 20-lap Kendall qualifier will advance 10 drivers into Saturday night’s main event. Friday night will be the USAC/CRA Challenge series main event, followed by the championship race Saturday night. Also Saturday, there will be a 15-lap C main event and a 25-lap B main event that will qualify six drivers for the final.

MOTORCYCLES--Newly crowned Camel Pro Series champion Bubba Shobert will attempt to become the first flat-track cyclist to win the Nissan Superbikers in the seventh annual competition Sunday at Carlsbad Raceway. The Superbikers, held on a course that is 1.1 miles of pavement and .9 mile of dirt, match champions of all forms of motorcycle racing but all six previous winners have been either motocross or road race riders. Defending Superbikers champion Kent Howerton, Supercross champion Jeff Ward and two-time world 125cc motocross champion Eric Geboers of Belgium head the motocross contingent, while 1984 Superbikers winner Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey will represent the road racers. Sam Ermolenko, third in the world speedway finals and a former motocross rider, will be the speedway representative. Other flat trackers include former national champion Ricky Graham and Doug Chandler. Racing starts at noon. . . . Jim Holley of Woodland Hills, with a second in Sweden and a win in Spain, leads the three-race Rodil International Trophy Series over John Vanderberk of Holland going into the final event Nov. 9 at the Coliseum. Ron Lechien of San Diego won the series opener, but was not in Spain because he was detained in Japan on a drug charge. . . . Mike Faria and Lance King continue their battle tonight for speedway supremacy at Ascot Park. Faria has won six main events but King holds a slight season edge.

DRAG RACING--Tom (Mongoose) McEwen presented a check for $3,400 to the American Cancer Society’s leukemia research division in ceremonies at the Winston World Finals last Sunday in Pomona. The money came from a fund provided by McEwen’s sponsor, Coors, which contributed a specific amount each time the Fountain Valley driver won a round in an NHRA or IHRA event. . . . Della Woods of Lake Onion, Mich., became the fastest and quickest woman driver in funny car history when he ran 243.24 m.p.h. in 5.95 seconds during World Final qualifying, but unfortunately it was good enough only for third alternate.

POWERBOATS--Defending champion Larry Rippenkroeger of Rio Linda, Calif., and points leader David Gordon of Wayland, Mass., head entries for Sunday’s fourth annual $30,000 World Jet Ski Finals at Lake Havasu City, Ariz. Twenty-three class champions will be crowned in the three-day festival that begins with qualifying Friday. . . . The International Wetbike Boating Assn. holds a two-day meet Saturday and Sunday in the Pierpont basin of the Ventura Harbor.

OFF ROAD--SCORE International is planning a Mexican road race--the Baja 1000 Endurance Safari--for rookie drivers who have never competed in an off-road event. It will be held Nov. 8-9 in conjunction with the 11th annual Baja 1000. Both events will start and end in Ensenada with the racers running approximately 820 miles and the neophytes 272, the last 96 of which will be on paved Mexican Highway 1. . . . Gaston Rahier and navigator Eddy Hau, winners of the Paris-Dakar Rally, have entered their BMW in the Baja 1000.

NEWSWORTHY--Peewee Distarce, 78, a pioneer midget car racing driver, will be feted Friday at noon by the Auto Racing Assn. at Taix Restaurant. . . . Mark Wolocatiuk of Riverside, an instructor for the Jim Russell British School of Racing and the 1984 Mazda Pro Series champion, won the season’s final two races but lost the Mazda championship to Ken Thwaits.