After 7-Year Layoff, Ferro to Race in Off-Road Event

The field was already a strong one in the featured Grand National Truck division of tonight’s Mickey Thompson Off-Road Gran Prix races at the Orange Show Fairgrounds in San Bernardino.

It got even stronger, though, with the announcement Friday that Bobby Ferro is returning to off-road racing after a seven-year layoff. He will be driving a truck for Team Mazda.

Ferro, one of the biggest winners in the sport, will be racing for the first time since he won the Mint 400 in 1979.

After that, he lost his sponsor and decided to take a little “vacation” from racing.

“I’d been racing non-stop for 10 years and I guess I was just burned out, so I decided to get out for a while,” he said. “I enjoyed not having the pressure.

“However, the sport has changed so much. The improvement in the cars, the factory support and everything got me interested again. I went to a couple of races and said, ‘Wow, I think I’d like to try that.’ So when the chance to drive for Mazda came up, I took it.”

Ferro has never driven a truck in competition, all his previous racing having been done in the buggy classes. He also has done very little stadium-style racing.

“It sure won’t help,” he said of his lack of experience on those counts. “But racing is racing, and I’ll just try to be around at the end.”

He will be driving against such established stars as Steve Millen and Ivan Stewart of Toyota, Roger Mears and Sherman Balch of Nissan, Danny Thompson of Chevrolet, Jeff Huber of Ford, Walker Evans of Dodge and Mazda teammate Glenn Harris.

In addition to the trucks, ultra-stocks, super 1600s, 3- and 4-wheel ATVs and Odysseys will race tonight on a course using most of the quarter-mile paved oval and all of the infield of the speedway.

The program will open with a fans’ photo-interview session with the drivers at 5:30 p.m. The first race is scheduled for 7.