Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Stock Car Racing’s Richest Week Gets Under Way Saturday at Daytona

The richest and busiest week in stock car racing history will begin Saturday at Daytona International Speedway when pole position qualifying is held for the $1,501,025 Daytona 500 on Feb. 15.

The 29th running of the Daytona 500, traditional opening event of the NASCAR Winston Cup season, will be the eighth race in a seven-day orgy of speed on the high banked 2 1/2-mile tri-oval.

Bill Elliott, driving his familiar Ford Thunderbird, will be trying for his third straight pole in Saturday’s time trials. Only the two front-row positions will be determined Saturday. The rest of the 42-car field will line up according to results of twin 125-mile races next Thursday.

Elliott, who set the track record of 205.114 m.p.h. in 1985, will have new help this year. Instead of doing all the chassis work himself, as he has done in the past, Elliott has hired Ivan Baldwin, former Orange Show Speedway champion in San Bernardino, to do the body work. Baldwin has been running his own race car building business in Northern California since leaving San Bernardino a decade ago, but moved to Dawsonville, Ga., to work on Elliott’s equipment.

The Busch Clash of ‘87, which will feature the 10 drivers who won pole positions in 1986 NASCAR races, plus “wild car” entry Alan Kulwicki, will be a short and sweet race Sunday. Only 50 miles, or 20 laps, it will pay $50,000 to win.

Defending Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt sees winning the Busch sprint as a good-luck omen.

“All I know is that in 1980 I won the Busch Clash and 10 months later won the Winston Cup championship,” Earnhardt said. “And last year I won the Busch Clash and won the Winston Cup again. That’s two for two. Now I want three. That’s not being greedy, is it?”

There will be added incentives Sunday with a bonus of $10,000 for the leaders at laps 5 and 15, and $15,000 for the lap-10 leader. If the same driver leads all the way, he will collect $85,000.

After the twin 125 qualifying races next Thursday, there will be two races Friday--the opening International Race of Champions and the Komfort Koach 250 for four-cylinder cars--and the Goody’s 300 for late model sportsman cars Saturday, Feb. 14.

Drag racer Ed (Ace) McCulloch, who won Chuck Foster’s $1 Million Drag Race last November in San Bernardino, still hasn’t received a cent.

The $20,000 check he was presented after winning the championship race on a sand drag strip in Glen Helen Park was not negotiable. It was supposed to be the first of 50 annual $20,000 payments, but it was only ceremonial.

The money, according to promoter Foster, was to come later from Pioneer Chicken Takeout in the form of an irrevocable prepaid insurance annuity. Pioneer officials allegedly have said they never made such an agreement.

Foster said he would voluntarily take a polygraph test next Wednesday to prove his side of the story and would challenge Pioneer Takeout officials to take a similar test.

Officials of Pioneer Takeout were unavailable for comment.

Dennis Myers, of San Jacinto, McCulloch’s attorney, said he is studying the possibility of lawsuits to get the promised $1 million but does not expect to take any concrete action for several weeks.

ANAHEIM--The last three weekends of motor racing attracted 214,539 fans to Anaheim Stadium, climaxed by the third-largest crowd in the stadium’s history, 70,351, for Mike Goodwin’s motocross last Saturday night. Earlier, there had been 64,758 for Mickey Thompson’s off-road program and 79,430 for two days of tractor pulls and mud bog racing.

SPRINT CARS--Sammy Swindell, former king of the Outlaws, will return to Ascot Park to defend the honors he won in last year’s World of Outlaws opening event on the Gardena oval. The 1987 opener will be a two-day show, Feb. 21-22. . . . The Parnelli Jones Firestone-sponsored California Racing Assn. season will start Feb. 28-March 1 at the California Mid-Winter Festival in El Centro.

COPPER WORLD--Gary Bettenhausen, who drove in all four divisions--sprint car, midget, supermodified and stock car--of last year’s Copper World Classic, will return Sunday to drive in the super modified and sprint car races. Bettenhausen didn’t win any of the four, but he won a supermodified feature last year at Saugus Speedway. A father-vs.-son match-up between Bill Vukovich Jr. and Bill Vukovich III, whose grandfather won the 1953 and 1954 Indianapolis 500s, will feature the midget main event.

IROC--The 12-driver field of the Budweiser International Race of Champions has been filled by Al Unser, Derek Bell, Wally Dallenbach Jr. and Scott Pruett. They will join Mario and Michael Andretti, Bobby Rahal, Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, Bill Elliott, Geoff Bodine and defending champion Al Unser Jr. in identically prepared Chavrolet Camaros. The first of a four-race series will be Feb. 13 at Daytona.

INDY CARS--Porsche will have an Indy car ready to run on the CART circuit in the final three races of the coming season, according to Al Holbert, director of the operation. Holbert, who helped drive the winning Porsche in last weekend’s 24 Hours of Daytona, finished fourth in the 1984 Indianapolis 500 but said he will not be the car’s driver. The Porsche is expected to make its debut Sept. 20 at Nazareth, Pa., and then compete at Laguna Seca, Oct. 11, and the season finale in Miami.

HONORS--Norma (Dusty) Brandel, of the Glendale News-Press, president of the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Assn., received the Diana Fell Gilmore “Woman Behind the Scenes” award and a check for $3,000 at the United States Auto Club banquet in Indianapolis.

NECROLOGY--Hank Paronelli, 71, of Sierra Madre, a race car builder and racing official for many years, died last Sunday of complications from heart surgery at the Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. Memorial services will be held Saturday at the Sierra Madre Congregational Church. Survivors include his wife, Lorraine, sons Ric and Tony, daughters Janelle Giardina and Gina, sisters Frances Gilbert and Adele Varela, and two grandchildren.