Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Beck Not in Driver’s Seat This Time

For the first time since 1972, Gary Beck, the defending champion, won’t be driving a top-fuel dragster when the National Hot Rod Assn. holds its 22nd annual Winston World Finals, which start a four-day run today at the L.A. County Fairgrounds in Pomona.

Beck, a two-time World top-fuel champion, parted company with car owner Larry Minor of Hemet three weeks ago and decided against renting a ride for the final event of the 14-race NHRA season.

“If all goes well, I will be driving next year for Billy Meyer’s team out of Waco, Tex.,” Beck said. “Billy just opened the finest drag racing facility I have ever seen, and now that it’s operating, he plans on adding a top-fuel car and another funny car to his team.”

Frank Hawley, two-time World funny car champion who retired two years ago to open a highly successful drag racing school in Gainesville, Fla., is expected to be Beck’s funny car teammate. Meyer opened an all-concrete drag strip, the centerpiece of his $6.5-million Texas Motorplex, in Ennis, Tex., last month with the NHRA Chief Nationals.

Beck’s decision not to line up a car for Pomona will also keep him out of Saturday’s $50,000 Cragar/Weld Wheel race for the year’s top eight top-fuel qualifiers. Beck was eighth. His place will be taken by No. 9 qualifier Gary Ormsby. Curiously, it was Ormsby whom Beck defeated in last year’s World Finals at Pomona.

The Cragar shoot-out will pay $30,000 to the winner. Former World champion Joe Amato of Old Forge, Pa., is defending champion. Other qualifiers include World champion Don (Big Daddy) Garlits, Dick LaHaie, Darrell Gwynn, Connie Kalitta, Gene Snow, Ormsby and former pro football star Dan Pastorini.

The World Finals, with both professional and sportsman classes, will have a record purse of $747,600, which includes contingency awards.

In 1983, the team of Beck and Minor was dominant in drag racing. Beck won the World championship and set an elapsed-time record of 5.391 seconds for a quarter-mile that lasted until this year when Gwynn ran 5.342 at Indianapolis. Gwynn lowered it to 5.261 during the Chief Nationals.

Gwynn also broke Garlits’ speed record, reaching 278.55 m.p.h. in the same event. Despite Gwynn’s record performances, however, Garlits beat the 25-year-old Miami, Ohio, driver in the Texas finals.

“Garlits keeps winning because he has the horsepower and he’s so track-wise,” Beck said. “He has been very aggressive in his attack on the quarter-mile this year, and the results show it.”

Garlits has won five events and all he needs to clinch his second straight World title is to qualify for Sunday’s 16-car top-fuel field.

Only three years ago, Beck was in that position. Now he is without a ride.

“Over the last three years there was a downward trend in our performance,” Beck said. “It certainly wasn’t because of a lack of effort on the team’s part. It was just that we couldn’t seem to get it done.

“This year it seemed we were working on the cars, not developing them. Consequently, the opposition left us behind. When it became apparent that Larry and I would part at the end of the year, it made me a lame duck driver, so we decided we’d make the break early so both of us could start working toward 1987.

“Who knows, we might both end up with quicker race cars.”

Beck scored 12 of his 19 NHRA wins during his seven years with Minor. This year, however, he failed to make the final round, although he was second-fastest qualifier on three occasions. In 4 of 12 events he was eliminated in early rounds by Garlits.

Minor, who won the Mile High Nationals at Denver in July, will drive Beck’s old car in the World Finals.

Pro qualifying will start today at 2 p.m., with additional qualifying Friday at 2 p.m. and Saturday at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Eliminations will start Sunday at 11 a.m.

Sammy Swindell, who has won all three winged sprint car races at Ascot Park, will try to keep his streak alive this weekend when the World of Outlaws closes a $2.75-million, 52-race season with the Pacific Coast Nationals on Ascot’s half-mile dirt track.

Swindell, second-winningest driver in Outlaw history, has been testing his Indy car skills in the American Racing Series, which was designed as a proving ground for Indy cars. While he was absent, old rivals Steve Kinser and Doug Wolfgang were winning main events last weekend at San Jose and Calistoga. For Kinser, known as King of the Outlaws, it was his 167th win, No. 18 this year, and increased his 1986 Outlaw earnings to $307,625.

This will be the first time since the U.S. Nationals last summer at Knoxville, Iowa, that Swindell, Kinser and Wolfgang, one of the sport’s leading drivers, have been in the same event.

Although Kinser won the Summer Nationals at Ascot in 1980 for wingless cars, he has never won on the Gardena oval with the big boards atop his machine. He was second and third to Swindell in his last two Ascot outings.

There will be 20-lap main events tonight and Friday night and a 30-lap feature Saturday night. Fans will have an opportunity to contrast the winged World of Outlaws cars with the wingless California Racing Assn. machines Sunday night when the CRA runs its regular Ascot program. Standings:

WORLD OF OUTLAWS (51 of 52 events)--1. Steve Kinser, Bloomington, Ind., 8101; 2. Bobby Davis Jr., Memphis, Tenn., 7692; 3. Ron Shuman, Tempe, Ariz., 6812; 4. Jimmy Sills, Sacramento, 6411; 5. Mark Kinser, Oolitic, Ind., 6380; 6. Jac Haudenschild, Millersburg, Ohio, 6357; 7. Tim Gee, Whitehorse, Alaska, 6298; 8. Jeff Swindell, Memphis, 6230; 9. Brad Doty, Fredericksburg, Ohio, 6138; 10. Bobby Allen, Hanover, Pa., 5975.

CRA (41 of 46 events)--1. Brad Noffsinger, Huntington Beach, 3258; 2. Eddie Wirth, Hermosa Beach, 3002; 3. Mike Sweeney, Carson, 2988; 4. Rip Williams, Garden Grove, 2487; 5. Jimmy Oskie, Downey, 2432; 6. Bubby Jones, Glen Avon, 2228; 7. Jerry Meyer, Brea, 2095; 8. Mark Sokola, Huntington Beach, 1992; 9. John Redican, Sepulveda, 1881; 10. Jeff Heywood, Huntington Beach, 1629.

OFF-ROAD RACING--Mark Anderson, California’s off-highway vehicle recreation commissioner, is in a semi-comatose state at the Western Neurological Care Center in Tustin as the result of a motorcycle accident in Baja California. Mark’s brother, Eric, and Bob Ham, a Sacramento off-road activities lobbyist, have entered an ’87 Jeep Cherokee in the Nov. 6-8 Baja 1000 Endurance Safari in hopes of raising funds to help the Anderson family defray Mark’s rehabilitation expenses. Anderson and Ham are soliciting pledges per mile for the 600-mile endurance event. For instance, if a pledge were made of 10 cents a mile, and the pair went the full 600 miles, $60 would be added to the fund. Pledges may be made out to the Mark Anderson Rehabilitation Fund, 3151 Airway Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif., 91626.

SAND DRAGS--World drag racing champions Don Garlits and Kenny Bernstein have entered Chuck Foster’s $1-Million Drag Race Oct. 30-Nov. 2, which will be held on a 100-yard sand drag strip at the Glen Helen OHV Park northwest of San Bernardino.

MOTORCYCLES--The Toyota Budweiser Formula USA Gran Prix will be run Sunday at Willow Springs Raceway. Included in the 10 20-mile races will be AFM club races and the AFM Kerker superbike series.