ROB DYSON : New Yorker Tries to Repeat at Riverside

The first time Rob Dyson saw Riverside International Raceway was through the windshield of a Porsche 962.

The following day, he was standing in the victory circle, accepting congratulations as winner of the 1986 Times Grand Prix of Endurance.

Dyson, 40-year-old radio executive from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., hadn’t even planned to drive but had to fill in when his No. 1 driver decided to race in Europe instead of at Riverside.

He and Price Cobb took a Porsche 962 that wasn’t pieced together until the night before qualifying and drove it from 10th place to first in the six-hour endurance race.

Today, Dyson and Cobb will be back in a less frantic situation to defend their championship, but in a different type of race.

Instead of six hours, the 1987 Times Grand Prix of Endurance has been shortened to 500 kilometers, which should run approximately three hours.

“It’s going to be an out-and-out sprint,” Dyson said Saturday after Cobb had qualified the car in fourth place. “We would prefer a little longer race, where the quality of the crew takes on more significance than pure banzai driving.”

Sarel van der Merwe, a lanky South African rally driver, put Rick Hendrick’s Corvette on the pole with a 130.498-m.p.h. lap around the 2.54-mile short course.

Curiously, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, in the turbocharged Electromotive Nissan, had a faster lap of 130.535, but he did it in a morning provisional qualifying session and couldn’t match it in the afternoon’s official session. The ‘Vette and the Nissan will start side by side on the front row today at 1 p.m.

Forbes-Robinson’s speed bettered the all-time Riverside short course record of 130.089 set by the late Mark Donohue in a Porsche 917/30 Can-Am car on Oct. 26, 1973.

Al Holbert, five-time IMSA GTP champion, was the fastest Porsche qualifier at 127.524, followed by Cobb’s 127.379.

“We do qualifying as a necessity to get in the race, nothing more,” Dyson said. “We qualified in our race setup and I’m sure some of those other teams had trick setups for qualifying.

“We’re here to run 500 kilometers, not one or two quick laps.”

Dyson is one of the few independent car owners racing at the GTP level, which makes wins like last year’s all the sweeter.

“California has been really good to us,” Dyson said, “and now all the crew looks forward to coming out here as if were a vacation. We’re all a bunch of New Yorkers and this sunshine and warm weather suits us fine.

“We never saw Riverside before last year but after winning, we feel like we’re part of the tradition and history.”

Dyson and Cobb completed a California double last August when they won at Sears Point for the Dyson Racing team’s seventh GTP win in 23 starts. The car also finished third at Laguna Seca.

It was the car that was a last minute performer at Riverside. At Sears Point, it was Dyson who almost didn’t make it.

On race morning he was stuck in traffic, so he gave the keys to his $50,000 Porsche 944 Turbo and his business card to a couple ahead of him in the traffic jam. Dyson hitched a ride to the starting line with a guy on a motorcycle.

“I just gave him my car keys and my business card,” Dyson said. “I asked him to find my rig in the paddock and park the car there and give the keys to a guy in an orange (Dyson team colors) suit.

“It was something I had to do or miss the start. After talking to the guy for 20 seconds, I felt I could trust him. I didn’t want to abandon it, so I just found someone who would bring it to the track for me.”

Dyson never did find out who the man was.

This will be the fifth race for Dyson’s 962--a new model from the one that won last year--but only the third drive for Dyson.

“I couldn’t drive in the last race (at Atlanta) because of business, and I missed Sebring because my kids had chicken pox and my wife needed help at home,” Dyson explained.

“I know if I have to miss a race, though, that the car is in good hands with Price (Cobb) and Vern (Schuppan) or James Weaver.

Dyson, Cobb and Schuppan finished fourth in the 24 Hours of Daytona; Dyson and Cobb finished seventh at Miami after losing two laps early with a flat tire; Cobb and Schuppan led two of the four hours the car ran at Sebring before it developed brake problems.

Cobb and Weaver won the Atlanta Grand Prix, a 500 kilometer race, when Cobb passed Holbert with eight laps to go.

“Winning in Atlanta can’t help but give us a lift for the race here,” Cobb said. “Like Rob said, though, we would like it a little longer.”

Cobb is a veteran Formula Atlantic and Super Vee driver who joined Dyson in 1985 at Watkins Glen.

“If Price had the breaks a few years ago, he could be driving an Indy or Formula One car,” Dyson said. “He finished second to Gilles Villeneuve in Formula Atlantic in 1976 and the next year Villeneuve was driving a Ferrari in Formula One.

“He drove against Bobby Rahal and Danny Sullivan and Keke Rosberg and Kevin Cogan and guys like that, and did as well as any of them on a regular basis, but he never got hooked up with a rich team. I think he’s as good as any of them.”

Cobb, 32, finished second last year in the Camel GTP’s driver’s championship behind Holbert and won the Porsche Cup for North America competition.

Price qualified the car and will start today’s race.

“Price is three seconds quicker at Riverside than me in qualifying,” Dyson said. “I don’t seem to have the hang-it-all-out attitude it takes to qualify fast, but in the race our times are a little closer. He does a better job of shooting out of a couple of corners than I do.”

Although this is only Dyson’s second season campaign on the full GTP circuit, he has been in racing for 14 years, mostly in club races around Poughkeepsie. He won a Sports Car Club of America national championship in 1981 driving a Datsun.

“We decided to race a Pontiac Firebird in GTO on a limited schedule in 1983, but we found out we had to do so much to make the car work that we might as well get into prototype racing.

“It’s been a good adventure for us ever since. We’ve been fairly successful, I think, and that’s because we still have the same gang of guys crewing for the team that we had when we were club racing.

“When we’re not racing, we all tend to hang around together. Pat Smith does a great job keeping things together as crew chief and most of the time it’s fun. We’d never have put that car on the track last year if everyone hadn’t been working together.

“The car literally was a pile of parts eight days before we got out here. We couldn’t even get it ready for practice Friday and the first time it turned a wheel was Saturday morning. You’ve got a hand it to a crew that can do something like that, and then have it go out and win.”

When Dyson isn’t racing, or sticking around home helping with ailing children, he runs a chain of radio stations in New York, Texas, Maryland, Ohio, Nebraska and Missouri.

“I’ve grown to like it so much here in California that I think I’ll look for a station out this way,” Dyson said.

Notes

Chris Cord, in one of Dan Gurney’s Toyota Celicas, won the pole for today’s 300-kilometer GTO-GTU race that will precede the Times Grand Prix with a 114.568-m.p.h. lap. Two Toyotas will start on the front row as Willy T. Ribbs was second fastest in Gurney’s other entry at 113.852 m.p.h. . . . Defending series champion Tom Kendall, in a Mazda RX-7, was the fastest GTU qualifier at 106.443.