LONG BEACH GRAND PRIX : READY TO RACE : Today, Rick Mears Will Be Looking for Something New: a Checkered Flag

Rick Mears spent 1985 recuperating from a crippling accident and 1986 developing a new car.

Now, he would like to get on with winning.

The three-time national champion and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner did not win a race last season--for the first time in nine years.

He has not won since the 1985 Pocono 500, a stretch of 18 races.

He has not won on a road course since 1982, when he took the last Indy car race at Riverside.

Today, in the $700,000 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach--opening race of the 1987 Indy car season--Mears will attempt to end all of his losing streaks on the 1.67-mile course laid out along the Long Beach waterfront.

The 35-year-old Bakersfield veteran will start from the ninth row in a new Penske PC-16, powered by an Ilmor Chevrolet engine. He had chassis problems during Saturday’s qualifying and did not improve on his Friday speed of 86.271 m.p.h.

Mears spent much of last year developing the Chevy engine that Mario Andretti used to win the pole for today’s race with a 91.249-m.p.h. lap.

“From what we learned, we feel the Chevy will be superior to the Cosworth on both the road circuits and the ovals,” Mears said. “The engine is smaller and sits lower in the chassis, giving us a cleaner aerodynamic package.

“Roger (Penske) believes that by having our own car and our own engine, we will gain an advantage over the other teams. Trying to develop them both at the same time doubled our problems, though, but we’re ready now.”

Mears, after winning his second Indy 500 in 1984, crashed at Sanair Speedway, near Montreal, a few months later. When his car wedged beneath a guard rail, the accident severely damaged his feet and he was sidelined for the rest of the season.

In 1985, when Mears’ feet failed to heal as quickly as hoped, he was unable to drive in road races and competed in only five oval events. He won the Pocono 500, but stepped aside as the Penske team driver to give Al Unser an opportunity to win his third national championship.

After Unser edged his son, Al Jr., for the title, he turned over the symbolic No. 1 to Mears for the 1986 season.

“Rick Mears is one hell of a man to do what he did,” Unser said. “He was ready to drive toward the end of the season, but when Penske had only two cars (Danny Sullivan drove the other one) ready, Rick let me drive so I could get the championship points.”

A somewhat similar situation occurred last year. When it became apparent in mid-season that the new Chevy engine needed more development time, Mears drove the experimental car and Sullivan drove the proven March Cosworth.

“Danny was in the points hunt, so the thing to do was have me take over the development,” Mears said matter-of-factly. “The only thing that was frustrating is that we didn’t win.”

Sullivan ended up third behind Bobby Rahal and Michael Andretti.

Mears drove with the Chevy engine in nine races, five with the PC-15 chassis and four with the March. The only time it finished was in the season finale at Miami, where Mears was third behind Al Unser Jr. and Roberto Guerrero.

“The 200 miles at Miami is the farthest the engine’s gone at one time, but we’ve put more than 500 miles on it in practice,” Mears said.

Mears had his most frustrating days last year in the March-Cosworth.

“The worst disappointments were at Indy and Pocono, especially Pocono where I should have had one of my easiest wins,” he said. “I had a 15-second lead over Mario (the eventual winner) and the car felt like I could run off and leave him anytime when the wing mount broke. It was one of those one-in-a-thousand freak happenings.”

At Indianapolis, Mears started on the pole after a record 217.581-m.p.h. qualifying lap and led 78 of the 200 racing laps before being passed late in the day by Rahal and Kevin Cogan.

“Indy was just one of those days where things didn’t work out,” Mears said. “I’ve had so many good ones there and seen other guys have ones like I had last year, I guess I was overdue.

“The car ran great while I was ahead, but once it got in traffic and turbulent air, it wouldn’t handle worth a darn.”

After the season, Mears set an American closed-course record with a lap at 233.934 m.p.h. at Michigan International Speedway. He was driving a March with the new Chevy engine.

That run bettered the record of 221.160 set by another Penske driver, the late Mark Donohue, in 1975 in a Porsche Can Am car. The world closed-course record is 251.918 m.p.h. by Dr. Hans Liebold, who drove a Mercedes-Benz C-111 on a 7.8-mile test track in Italy in 1979.

The turbocharged Chevrolet engine was pushed up to 60 inches of boost pressure, however, which is well above the 48-inch limit for races.

“For me, it was a frustrating year because we didn’t win, but looking at it from a different perspective, it wasn’t all that bad,” Mears said. “We sat on the pole four times, finished third in laps led and sixth in money earning.

“We were in the hunt at most races, we just didn’t win. We were changing things and developing the car all year, but there were a lot of drivers who would have loved to have our problems.”

Mears’ first experience with the PC-16, which was completed during the off-season at the Penske shop in Poole, England, was not encouraging. The car lasted only 15 laps during its shakedown test at Phoenix before the right front push rod broke, sending the car crashing into the second turn wall.

“I wasn’t hurt, but I can’t say as much for the car,” Mears said. “It tore the right side off and tweaked the tub enough that they sent the whole thing back to England for reassessment.

“It was the same thing that caused my accident last year at Laguna Seca, but that time I didn’t know why it happened. This time I did.”

The crash set the program back a couple of weeks before the second PC-16 was delivered to Penske headquarters in Reading, Pa.

“We (Mears and Sullivan) managed to run about 200 laps at Phoenix to get ready for Long Beach,” Mears said. “I’m real pleased with the total team package. It might not look much different from the PC-15, but it is, in quite a few ways.”

The car has a lower profile, smaller side pods, a redesigned transmission, a new engine cooling system and is much easier to repair.

Mears is not happy over one aspect of the development, however.

“We worked all last year to develop the engine and then three other guys get them without doing a lick of work,” he said.

Last year, the Penske and Pat Patrick teams had an exclusive on the new power plant, although Patrick did not use it.

This year the Chevy will be used by both of Patrick’s drivers, Emerson Fittipaldi and Kevin Cogan, and by Mario Andretti in the Newman-Haas Lola.

Mears’ feet still bother him, “but not in the race car.

“They still tell me when there’s going to be a change in the weather, but I don’t have any more excuses for the races.”

Mears recently had foot molds made so that foam inserts could be built for his shoes to distribute his weight evenly.

“They’ve really made a difference. I wear them all the time and my feet don’t get near as tired, nor as painful.”