He’s Taking Fast Lane to Hollywood

Tim Richmond is a motorist who has logged more than 200,000 miles in the last few years without ever seeing Mount Rushmore, Mount Vernon, Old Faithful, a Canadian sunset, Hoover Dam or either Disneyland.

He’s never had to stop and say, “Excuse me, which way’s the Grand Canyon?” or, “Wasn’t Lincoln born around here someplace?”

He never had to stop to let the kids go to the bathroom. He never even got a ticket--although he broke every speed law that’s ever been written every time he got behind the wheel.

He’s had a lot of flat tires and a lot of collisions but he’s never spent a day in court over them.

He never needs a road map, He never stops to eat, never hits a red light but he stops for gas every 25 minutes. He doesn’t even get four miles to the gallon. He has seven cars to choose from but you wouldn’t want any of them. No radio, no heater. No back seat. Air conditioning by nature. Some cars you have to crawl out of. His, you have to crawl into.

A lot of people start out on a trip and, after three hours, look up and say, “My God, this is where we started! We’ve come in a circle!”

Richmond does it every Sunday. On purpose. His life is like what the Queen of Hearts describes in “Alice In Wonderland”: “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”

Tim, you see, is a race driver. One of the best. He’s won six races and seven pole positions on the tough NASCAR circuit this year, a brilliant performance which, only because of a couple of mechanical breakdowns in his own equipment and the dogged consistency of champion Dale Earnhardt, leaves him in third place in the Winston Cup standings. He can overtake Darrell Waltrip and vault into second with a win Sunday in the Winston Western 500 at Riverside, the season’s final race.

That’s pretty heady stuff but not out of character for a guy who wound up in Victory Lane in his very first ride at the Indianapolis 500. Actually, Tim didn’t win his way there, he hitched his way there.

The circumstances were these: Tim had run out of fuel in the race just as it was being won by Johnny Rutherford. Richmond was ninth and rookie of the year.

Rutherford, taking his victory lap, spotted the rookie trudging to the pits. He stopped, waved him aboard, and the rookie of the year and the winner of the year rolled into Victory Lane together.

Tim Richmond drove at Indy one other year, finishing 14th in 1981.

People do not become race drivers because they are patient. Racers are racers because they are in a hurry. And Tim Richmond soon found that, despite early success, Indy race cars are, to say the least, impatient with impatience.

They seem to resent young hot-shot or wild-eyed rookie drivers who want to win races on the first lap, and they take great pleasure in teaching them a lesson by banging them into a wall or spinning them out of control. Indy cars don’t take well to bullying. They are temperamental, stubborn creatures. They are the opera stars of motor racing.

Tim Richmond found stock cars a little more indulgent. They are not so punitive. Not that they won’t crack your knuckles--or bust your head--but they take a little longer to get annoyed, give you a chance to make amends.

Richmond was lured into a stock car at Pocono in 1981 and knew he had found his spot. There was, he found, more real racing in stock cars. “At Indy, you spend more of your time just driving, trying to keep the car pointed in the right direction,” he said. “You don’t have the time for real racing, just surviving. I liked to race, not pilot.”

Lots of actors play race drivers. It was one of Gable’s better roles. Paul Newman loved the part so much he switched careers. Jim Garner and Robert Redford have loved the part.

Tim Richmond is a driver who wants to play an actor. To that end, he has hired a Hollywood management firm, he poses for publicity stills, he has gone to acting school in Atlanta, and he has made appearances in one of Burt Reynolds’ movies.

A bachelor who lives on a yacht in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., much of the year--the rest of the time he is either in a race car or an airplane--Richmond hasn’t yet showed up with a pet leopard and a fur coat thrown over his shoulders but he is definitely not your basic good ol’ boy stocker who drinks beer from a bottle, lips snuff and can always be found in a car or under it. If you find Tim Richmond in a car this week, it’ll be a Rolls.

But for the present, Tim wants a checkered flag more than an Oscar. He doubts he’ll ever do Shakespeare but he has the looks to get the girl even in a picture with Reynolds.

His chief mechanic, Harry Hyde, not the type to carry a hair dryer in his duffel and gets annoyed at what he calls “all that Hollywood stuff.” But Richmond feels that the business calls for “a little show business flair.” He adds: “It attracts sponsors, it’s what they’re in it for--recognition.”

Timothy Lee Richmond has attracted Folger’s coffee as his sponsor. In the parking lot, he attracts a crowd. He does that on the track, too. He is a highly recognizable commodity in the Southeast.

“Richmond Takes Richmond,” was the wry headline in the local paper the day he won the stock car race in the Virginia capital.

Tim would like to see “Actor Takes Riverside” this week and maybe get to spend the rest of his career in a stretch limousine instead of a souped-up Chevy and, when people say he wants to be another King Richard, they’ll mean Shakespeare’s, not Petty’s.

And he’ll get to do all the rest of his 500-mile drives the rest of his life from a back seat--watching television.