BACK WHERE IT BEGAN : BOY FROM BRAZIL : Roberto Moreno Returns to Long Beach, Where He Made Big Impression in ’82 Formula Atlantic Race

Long Beach has a special place in Roberto Moreno’s memory bank.

It was racing through the streets there in 1982 that the tiny Brazilian driver, then 23, finished second to Geoff Brabham in a Formula Atlantic race.

For Moreno, it was a solo effort, something to do on his way back to Europe after winning the New Zealand Formula Atlantic championship.

There was nothing special about the Long Beach race. It was just a side attraction to the Formula One world championship Grand Prix, but Moreno’s heady drive caught the eye of at least one observer.

Rick Galles, an Albuquerque, N.M., car dealer who was about to launch a career as an Indy car team owner, liked what he saw and filed Moreno’s name away. At the time, Galles had only a Can-Am team with Al Unser Jr. as his driver.

Little Al won the championship that season, and in 1984, Galles took the step up to Indy cars.

When Al Jr. left Galles at the end of the ’84 season to replace Danny Sullivan as Doug Shierson’s driver, Galles remembered the 5-6, 120-pound kid from Brasilia.

“I was in Europe, trying to race in Formula Two with never enough money to do it right when I got a call from Rick Galles, asking me if would drive for him in 1985,” Moreno recalled. “It was right out of the blue. I had never met him; I had never driven on an oval of any kind, and I was taken completely by surprise.”

Moreno, whose dream as a teen-ager racing go-karts in Brazil had been to drive in the Indianapolis 500, agreed to join Galles in midseason for five Indy car road races before running the full ’86 schedule.

“I’m glad I did it,” he said. “Even though I did not get any practice on an oval, I learned a lot about driving Indy cars from Pancho Carter and Geoff Brabham (his Galles teammates), so I feel more at home this year.”

Moreno, who will drive a Lola in Sunday’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, drove his first oval race last Sunday at Phoenix.

“I qualified 10th, which pleased me because I was ahead of drivers like Johnny Rutherford, Tom Sneva and A.J. Foyt,” he said. “I was just beginning to get the feel of racing when the gear box quit. I am looking forward to my rookie test (April 24-27) at Indy and driving there.”

First, however, there is Long Beach, the CART/PPG season’s first road race, where Moreno will feel more at home.

“I like Long Beach and I feel Geoff and I are well prepared,” he said. “We did a lot of testing at Hallett, Okla., to set the car up for the Long Beach circuit.”

In Friday’s first round of qualifying, Moreno was fifth after a lap at 88.986 m.p.h. around the 11-turn, 1.67-mile road course.

“I like it here, too, because I lived in Torrance for six months in 1983 and I enjoy coming back to this area.”

In 1983, Moreno came to Long Beach to drive in another Formula Atlantic/Mondiale race, but when the promoters canceled the race in favor of a Super Vee event, Moreno’s sponsor quit the team.

“We had a car and mechanics, but no money,” Moreno said. “We loaded the car on a trailer and hauled it to Willow Springs with a friend’s Jeep.”

Moreno won that race, and Macao racing entrepreneur Teddy Yip backed the team for the rest of the season.

“I won four races, and Michael Andretti won three, but he won the championship because in all the races I won, he finished second,” Moreno said. “But in the races he won, I didn’t finish.”

Moreno also drove six races for Dan Gurney’s Toyota team on the IMSA GTU circuit that year.

Moreno has won races in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, West Germany, Canada, England, Belgium, Macao and Malaysia, but never in South America.

“I never won any races in South America because I never raced there, except in karts,” he said.

Moreno bought his first kart second-hand from his friend Nelson Piquet, who left Brazil and won two Formula One titles.

“After I won the Brazilian kart championship, Nelson helped me get a Formula Ford ride in Europe, so I left home,” Moreno said. “Now, I race all over the world, but when I get home to Brasilia, it is not to race. It is to relax.”

Moreno has had his best success racing in Australia, where he won that country’s Formula Pacific Grand Prix in three of four years.

“In 1981, I beat Nelson and Alan Jones,” he said. “Jones had just retired after winning the world championship the year before, but he wanted to run one more race in his home country. I spoiled it for him.

“The three wins in Australia were my biggest thrill. Not the races themselves, but competing against and beating world champions like Nelson, Jones, Niki Lauda and Keke Rosberg.”

Moreno is best known among race enthusiasts as being the driver Al Unser passed to finish fourth in Miami last year--a move that enabled the elder Unser to defeat Al Jr. by a single point for the national driving championship.

Had Moreno held off Unser, the son would have won.

“I hear people say it looked like I let the father pass me,” Moreno said. “I would never do that. I would have fought for my position, but I had made an earlier pit stop than Unser, and my tires were starting to go away. His tires were fresher, and I had no chance to keep him behind me.”