Motor Racing Roundup : Michael Andretti Wins After His Dad Crashes

First Mario Andretti and then Roberto Guerrero looked like a sure winner at Milwaukee Sunday before fate stepped in for the second straight week, this time handing the victory to Michael Andretti.

The younger Andretti picked up his second straight Miller American 200 win, the fourth victory of his Indy-car career, while his father was in a nearby hospital undergoing precautionary X-rays and Guerrero was hiding his disappointment in his motor home.

Last week in the Indianapolis 500, the elder Andretti led 170 of the first 177 laps before a mechanical problem knocked him out of action and put Guerrero in the driver’s seat. But he wound up second to Al Unser at Indy when a faulty clutch stalled his car on a late pit stop.

Sunday, Mario crashed when his rear wing snapped off while he was leading the race, and Guerrero’s engine blew as he battled for the lead with the younger Andretti just 22 laps from the finish.

Michael Andretti called the moment when he saw his father’s smashed car alongside the track in Turn One “one of the worst moments of my career.”

The younger Andretti said: “I didn’t know what to think. I kept in radio contact. When I found out he was all right, I said, ‘This one’s going to be for Dad.’ ”

Bobby Rahal, the defending CART-PPG series champion, wound up second, 6.3 seconds behind Andretti.

Mario Andretti led the 200-lap event with only 50 trips around the one-mile oval remaining when the rear wing snapped off his Lola.

The car spun on the main straightaway of the Wisconsin State Fair Park Speedway oval and slammed rear-end first into the concrete wall, skidded back across the track and backed into the inside wall.

Andretti was taken from the car by track safety personnel and transported to Milwaukee County General Hospital for X-rays, which determined that Andretti suffered what Dr. Steve Olvey called “a sore neck.” Andretti was released from the hospital and is expected to drive in Portland in two weeks.

Of his blown engine, Guerrero said: “It just went boom. There was no warning whatsoever.”

Michael Andretti easily stayed ahead the rest of the way. Rahal was the only other competitor on the lead lap at the end. The winner, who earned $51,210, averaged 111.853 m.p.h. A crowd estimated at close to 40,000 was on hand for the fourth of 15 Indy-car races this season.

At Dover, Del., Davey Allison beat Bill Elliott, the only other driver on the lead lap, by 6.87 seconds to win the Budweiser 500 stock car race.

Allison, a rookie from Hueytown, Ala., averaged 112.952 m.p.h. for 500 miles over the high-banked Dover Downs International Speedway for his second NASCAR Winston Cup victory.

Allison and his father, Bobby Allison, held the top two positions for about 200 of the 500 laps on the one-mile oval, but Bobby Allison dropped out because of overheating about three-quarters of the way through the race.

At Monte Carlo, Brazil’s Ayrton Senna won the Monaco Grand Prix, keeping France’s Alain Prost from scoring a record 28th victory.

Senna raced unchallenged for the final 47 laps of the 78-lap race around the narrow, twisting circuit. He was timed in 1 hour 57 minutes 54.085 seconds, an average of about 82 m.p.h. over the 161-mile course, and finished 33.212 seconds ahead of countryman Nelson Piquet.

Kenny Bernstein of Newport Beach had an elapsed time of 5.760 seconds and a speed of 258.99 m.p.h. to win the Funny Car championship at the NHRA Cajun Nationals at Baton Rogue, La.