Motor Racing : England’s Phil Collins Reverses Usual Path of Speedway Riders

For many years, speedway motorcycle riders from Southern California have traveled to England to ply their trade in the Mecca of the sport--the British Speedway League.

One, Bruce Penhall of Balboa, won two world championships. Others, from Scott Autrey to Bobby Schwartz and Dennis Sigalos and the Moran brothers, Shawn and Kelly--to this year’s group that includes Sam Ermolenko, Lance King, Rick Miller and Ronnie Correy--have won their spurs as British team regulars.

Now Phil Collins, one of England’s most respected riders and a two-time world finalist, has made the reverse move.

Whoa now, rock fans, don’t get excited. This isn’t that Phil Collins, even though he is a little thin on top and has a British accent. The Phil Collins who races a motorcycle at 100 m.p.h.--without brakes--is not the Phil Collins who is lead singer and drummer for Genesis.

Collins the rider, 27, is a member of the Cradley Heath team and was a teammate of Penhall for many years. But he took a leave this season to ride on the Southern California circuit--the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, the Inland Speedway in San Bernardino, Ascot Park’s South Bay Stadium in Gardena and Speedway USA in Victorville.

Tonight and Saturday night, however, Collins will revert to his British heritage and ride for the World team against Team America in Chris Agajanian’s Budweiser American Cup Challenge. Both programs will be at Ascot, tonight on the South Bay eighth-mile speedway oval and Saturday night on the big half-mile of adjacent Ascot Park.

A similar USA vs. World match a year ago at Ascot led to Collins’ decision to ride in Southern California.

“I was sitting at home in Manchester when I got a call from Ivan Mauger (former world champion and manager of the ’86 World team) asking me if I could come to California to ride Thursday night,” Collins said. “He said he was not impressed with a couple of his continental riders and wanted a reserve.

“It was already Wednesday, but I said OK. I jumped on a plane early Thursday morning, London time, arrived in Los Angeles a little after 4 p.m., California time, and came straight to the track. The races started at 7. I had never seen the place, so they let me take two practice laps. I fell off on the first corner in the first lap, it (the oval) was so tight.”

The track at Ascot’s South Bay is 220 yards. The tracks Collins had been riding in England were between 500 and 1,000 yards.

“I had to borrow a machine from one of the other riders, and it took me a couple of heats to get the hang of it,” Collins said.

He finished third in his first heat, then second and then won four straight to become high-point man of the night, although his World team lost, 57-50.

“I left the next morning because I had a race Saturday night in England,” Collins said. “After I landed, I had to drive about a hundred miles from Heathrow (airport) up to Birmingham. All I got was about an hour’s sleep before the race, and when it was over I drove straight through to the ferry at Dover, crossed over to Calais and drove all night to get to a Sunday race in Germany.”

It was that kind of schedule, without the round trip to Los Angeles, that helped Collins decide that he would rather commute in the sunshine from a friend’s home in Newport Beach to Costa Mesa, San Bernardino, Victorville and Gardena.

“In all last year, I made 23 crossings to the Continent in six months, and each time it meant driving between 800 and 900 miles, in addition to the racing. Between the travel and the rainy English weather and the fact that after 10 years of racing my hopes of becoming world champion were not getting nearer, I was a bit disillusioned. I felt the pressure of being a high-priced British rider having to produce for a British team caused me to burn out.”

After Collins had won his country’s junior championship in 1978 for Ellesmere Port, the first division Cradley Heath team paid 15,000--about $30,000 then--for his contract. At the time it was a record transfer fee for speedway racing.

Collins comes from a racing family. His oldest brother, Peter, 33, won the world championship in 1976 in Poland, and another brother, Les, finished second to Penhall in the 1982 World Finals at the Coliseum. Another brother, Neal, also rode in the British League.

With Collins on the World team tonight and Saturday will be Hans Nielsen of Denmark, the World champion, and Marvin Cox of England, a qualifier for the Sept. 5-6 World Finals in Amsterdam.

The U.S. team, headed by national champion Bobby (Boogaloo) Schwartz, also has a World qualifier in John Cook of Roseville, Calif. Cook and Sam Ermolenko of Corona both advanced to the World Finals in last Sunday’s Intercontinental semifinals in Denmark. A third American rider, Kelly Moran, withdrew because of a shoulder injury suffered last month at Ascot Park.

“The Europeans will find the tiny tracks very difficult, and they may be surprised, too, at the caliber of the American riders,” Collins said. “The U.S. scene is a great training ground. The tracks are so small that the start becomes extra important. If you don’t get off the line in front, there’s no second chance.

“Also, the riders are much closer to each other here. In Europe, on the longer tracks, there is very little contact. The Europeans are not used to having the American riders leaning on them, but it’s something that happens in every race here. There’s no room not to lean on each other.”

Collins’ secret desire is to win the United States championship Oct. 10 at Costa Mesa. After three of six qualifying sessions to select the 16 finalists, the British veteran is ninth, so he is reasonably well assured of making the finals.

“What a story that would make back home,” he said, envisioning headlines in the British sporting press. It would be a lot bigger there, in fact, than it would be here.

Collins has won three handicap main events and two at scratch, both at San Bernardino, during his 10 weeks in Southern California. At Ascot, however, Schwartz had been all but unbeatable, having won 13 of 16 scratch main events.

Confusion over which Phil Collins is which has caused some interesting situations.

For instance, Ben Foote, Ascot executive vice president, advertises on radio KLOS, a rock station. When Collins first came to Southern California, Foote’s commercial script headlined the British rider.

“The switchboard lit up at KLOS with so many calls that the station asked if we’d cancel the commercial,” Foote said. “The Genesis were appearing at the Forum about the same time and it seemed that all the rock fans wanted to know if it was true that their hero was racing on the side.”

The first night that Collins rode at Costa Mesa, a young woman approached him after the program, asked for his autograph, and gushed, “Oh, Phil, I have your latest album at home!”

Collins, the racer, has never met his namesake, but he hopes to some day.

“I want to ask him if he’s ever had someone ask for his autograph and say, ‘I saw you race the other night at Wembley.’ ”

SPORTS CARS--Toyota driver Willy T. Ribbs has been suspended for 30 days by the International Motor Racing Assn. for punching fellow driver Scott Pruett after a GTO race last Sunday at Portland. The suspension will keep Ribbs out of this weekend’s Ford California Grand Prix at Sears Point Raceway, north of San Francisco. Ribbs finished second to teammate Chris Cord, but claimed that Pruett ran him off the track, thus preventing him from a possible win. It was the first time IMSA has suspended a driver since its inception in 1969, according to President John Bishop. . . . The California Sports Car Club will hold seven championship points races Sunday at Riverside International Raceway. Practice and qualifying are set for Saturday.

OFF-ROAD--When Dave Ashley led all 10 laps of the mini-truck feature at the Thompson Off-Road Gran Prix last Saturday night in the Coliseum, it was the first time a Jeep had led as much as a single lap in stadium racing. Ashley, 26, of Riverside, will be joined by the Unsers, father Al and son Al Jr., on the Jeep team in the SCORE closed-course championships Aug. 22-23 at Riverside International Raceway. Thompson’s Coliseum show, billed as family entertainment, dragged on until well after midnight.

MOTOCROSS--A reader asks what happened to Bob Hannah and Suzuki’s much publicized defense of his 250cc championship in the U.S. round of the 12-country World Championship series at Hollister Hills. Hannah qualified 11th, finished 30th in the first moto and did not start in the second. U.S. champion Rick Johnson, riding a Honda, was an easy winner of both 40-minute motos over world leader Eric Geboers of Belgium. . . . The CMC will run its regular program Friday night at Ascot Park, splitting the USA vs. World speedway match at the same site.

MIDGETS--Three-quarter midgets of the United States Auto Club’s western regional series will race Friday night at Ventura Raceway in a 30-lap feature on the one-fifth mile dirt oval.

SPRINT CARS--The California Racing Assn. will make its lone appearance of the year at Baylands Raceway, near San Jose, on Saturday night. Defending champion Brad Noffsinger pulled closer to Mike Sweeney by winning last week at Ascot Park. The margin is 2,244 to 2,161.

STOCK CARS--A pair of NASCAR-sanctioned programs this weekend will have modified, sportsmen, street stock and Figure 8 cars at Saugus Speedway on Saturday night, and pro stocks, bombers, hobby stocks and Figure 8s at Ascot Park on Sunday night. Cajon Speedway will feature a destruction derby Saturday night in El Cajon.

DRIVER OF YEAR--By winning Indy car races at Portland and the Meadowlands, plus an IMSA sports car race and the International Race of Champions at Mid-Ohio, Bobby Rahal was a unanimous selection as second quarter winner in voting for driver of the year, conducted by Cuyro Services of Pittsburgh. Rahal, the 1986 recipient, polled 77 points to 44 for runner-up Tim Richmond, winner of the Pocono and Riverside stock car races. They were followed by stock car rookie Davey Allison, drag racer Dick LaHaie, Indy 500 winner Al Unser and Trans-Am leader Scott Pruett.