Saturday’s Races : King Hits Wall, and Win Goes to Bateman

Perry King, star of adventure movies and television series, was saying just the other day how Hollywood has been carried away with scenes of cars crashing and burning.

“I’m not really into that,” King said. “I think it’s overdone.”

So guess who crashed and burned in the Toyota Pro-Celebrity Race on the Grand Prix circuit at Long Beach Saturday.

King, who won the event last year, shrugged and said, “I don’t think it really burned. It was just smoking. Somebody punted me into the wall.”

King’s culprit appeared to be Chad McQueen, who checkmated King into the wall on the Seaside Way back straightaway. The son of the late Steve McQueen, who appears in “Bullitt II,” also will drive in today’s Bosch Super Vee race at 10:40 a.m.

The 17 entries, including seven professionals who started the race in a pack 30 seconds behind, played 10 laps of Destruction Derby before 18-year-old Jason Bateman of “Valerie” emerged the winner by a fraction of a second--.646--over Richard Dean Anderson of “MacGyver.”

Pro Juan Manuel Fangio II was another 2.256 seconds behind.

King’s car, its front end destroyed, had to be brought in by a wrecker. Fangio tapped retired Angel Bobby Grich into a spin while passing him on the hairpin turn, and disc jockey Hollywood Hamilton finished on three wheels with debris from his car strewn around the track.

Scratch a couple of Celicas.

“Hamilton hit me twice,” said “Leave It To Beaver’s” Tony Dow.

KABC-TV’s Ted Dawson: “Hollywood spun me out in Turn 1.”

“Dynasty’s” Ted McGinley: “Holy (bleep)! Who let Hollywood Hamilton on the course? Incredible!”

Hamilton left the circuit after the race and was unavailable to explain his driving style.

The venerable Dan Gurney admitted he “made a mistake. My brakes locked and I went off the escape road at Turn 9.”

Bateman is the youngest winner in the event’s 11 years and the first celebrity to finish first since Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner in 1982. It was the second closest finish next to Robert Hays’ win over Parnelli Jones by 0.34 in ’81.

Anderson, the polesitter, led the race for five laps, with Bateman in his draft. Then, moving between Turns 1 and 2 at the end of Shoreline Drive, Anderson’s car jumped out of first gear and when he slowed Bateman tapped him from behind.

“He hit my rear end and went on past and that was it,” Anderson said. “Then I was on his tail the rest of the way.”

Bateman said: “I hope it wasn’t because of that little tap. I bumped him and he veered off to the right. I just floored it in second and went past him.”

Fangio, 30-year-old nephew of Argentina’s Formula One legend of the 50s, is campaigning in the ARS in the U.S. but took Saturday’s race seriously.

“He put me on an E-ticket ride,” Grich said.

Fangio: “He was going a little slow. In all types of racing, everybody wants to win.”

Or at least survive.

Scott Pruett of Roseville, Calif., showed that he knows how to win from either end of the field when he won the season-opening Bendix Trans-Am race by 1 minute 2.33 seconds over Tom Kendall, 20, a UCLA junior.

Pruett, 26, led from the pole for 19 of the 60 laps before moving over to let Roush racing teammate Peter Halsmer by. Then when Halsmer dropped out with a broken connecting rod after 39 laps, Pruett cruised to victory.

A year ago Pruett missed qualifying at Riverside and started his first Trans-Am race from 31st position in the last row, but picked his way through the pack to win.

“This victory is real sweet,” he said, “but it’s a little sweeter coming from the back.”

A third Roush entry, Deborah Gregg of Jacksonville, Fla., started 28th in her Trans-Am debut but placed eighth, two laps behind Pruett in the strung-out field.

Five laps (40-45) were run under a yellow caution flag when a plugged rain gutter at the Hyatt Hotel suddenly opened and flooded Turn 7 near the hotel garage.