Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Palm Springs Airport Will Once Again Hear Roar of Ferraris, Porsches

Back before there was a Riverside International Raceway, or a Willow Springs, or any other road racing facility in Southern California, sports car enthusiasts laid out a course on the Palm Springs Airport where they could race--and party. Or maybe it was party--and race.

Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, Jack McAfee, Bill Stroppe, Max Balchowsky and Eric Hauser were some of the drivers who drove their Ferraris, Maseratis, Porsches, Mercedes and Balchowsky’s “Old Yeller” Buick over the runways.

This weekend, in the second renewal of the Palm Springs Vintage Grand Prix, many of those old-time drivers and their cars will be back to drive on a 1.1-mile, seven-turn course similar to the one used between 1951 and 1963.

There will be 13 races Saturday and Sunday, ranging from world championship Formula Ones to small-engine production street cars.

Two former world Grand Prix champions, Phil Hill of Santa Monica and Jack Brabham of Australia, will drive Sunday in the Victory Lane Formula One race. Hill, 59, will probably be in the Ferrari that John Surtees drove to the Formula One championship in 1964. Surtees had planned to drive but had to cancel his trip from England because of a back injury. Brabham, 60, will drive either a Cooper similar to the one he drove to the world championship in 1959 and 1960 or a ’62 Lotus.

Other drivers announced for the feature race include former Formula One competitors Innes Ireland, Bob Bondurant, Rodger Ward, Bobby Unser, Pete Lovely, George Follmer and perhaps Gurney. Ward and Unser are also both former Indianapolis 500 winners.

Unser will drive a ’74 Eagle Formula 5000 car, Bondurant a ’67 Ferrari, Ireland and Ward ’60 Lotuses, Lovely a ’68 Lotus and Follmer a ’68 Formula 5000 Lola. If Gurney drives, he will probably be in an ’82 McLaren.

Jackie Stewart, three-time world champion from Scotland, will also be in Palm Springs as a representative of sponsoring Lincoln-Mercury-Merkur but will not drive. Another former racing star, Sam Hanks, is director of racing for Vintage Racing, sanctioning body for the event. Hanks, 1957 Indianapolis 500 winner, won the Palm Springs Road Races main event in 1953 driving a Ferrari.

One thing promoters have promised is that Sunday will not end the way the racing there did in 1961. On that day, Jim Hall, in a 2.5-liter Cooper-Monaco, was leading with five laps remaining when a Western Airlines plane arrived and needed a runway to land. The race was called off and Hall declared the winner.

MIDGETS--Rich Vogler of Indianapolis, newly crowned midget car champion of the United States Auto Club, will head an all-star cast in tonight’s 47th annual Valvoline Turkey Night Midget Grand Prix at Ascot Park. Vogler clinched his fourth championship last Friday night at Ventura under unusual circumstances. When neither he nor Mel Kenyon, last year’s champion, qualified for the main event, it left Vogler with a 43-point lead over Kenyon and only 38 points available in the season finale at Ascot. Ron Shuman, a five-time Turkey Night winner from Tempe, Ariz., and Brad Noffsinger, the California Racing Assn. sprint car champion from Huntington Beach, will drive identical Cosworth-powered Challengers owned by Larry Howard of Temecula. Noffsinger won four midget races, three at Ascot and one at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix, between sprint car assignments this year. If Noffsinger wins tonight, he will be the first CRA champion to win the Turkey Grand Prix in the same year since Rick Goudy did it in 1978. Other former USAC champions entered in the 100-lap race include two-time winner Sleepy Tripp of Costa Mesa, Indy 500 veteran Tom Bigelow of Winchester, Ind.; Steve Lotshaw of Indianapolis, Kevin Olson of Rockford, Ill., and Kenyon.

MORE MIDGETS--Robby Flock of City of Industry will take his new Jolly Rancher Western States championship to El Centro Saturday night for the final race of the regional series. Flock clinched the title last Saturday night at Baylands Raceway in Fremont when he finished sixth, right behind Rusty Rasmussen of Fresno, his nearest challenger. That left Flock leading by 47 points with only 45 available at Imperial Raceway in the final race.

MOTORCYCLES--The 12th Coors Barstow-to-Vegas hare-and-hound desert race will be held Saturday, with the first riders taking off at 7:30 a.m. The race will start at Alvord Road, off I-15, 19 miles northeast of Barstow, and will end near Sloan, Nev.

ASCOT PARK--The busiest race track in the country will close for 1986 on Saturday night after promoter Chris Agajanian presents the Fall Mud Bog championship. The bog--200 feet long, 25 feet wide and 3 feet deep--will be negotiated in time trials by seven divisions of the U.S. Mud Bog Assn. There will be three professional and four amateur classes.