Motor Racing : Pete Halsmer Had Varied but Winning Season

When Pete Halsmer was signed as a team driver for Ford Motorsport, he was offered the use of any vehicle the company made--a Lincoln, Thunderbird, Mercury, Mustang, whatever he wanted.

He chose a four-wheel-drive Bronco II.

That says a lot for the style of Halsmer, 43, a 1967 graduate of Purdue University with degrees in industrial education and aviation electronics. He prefers to race in a comfortable environment on a lesser level of competition, where his engineering input can be useful, rather than at the highest level, on a team for which he might be considered only a hired gun.

So, instead of accepting Indy car rides of questionable character last season, Halsmer chose to drive a Mercury Merkur for Jack Roush in Trans-Am sedan and International Motor Sports Assn. sports car races, and both a Ford Ranger in the Coors Racetruck series and a Mustang in the Sports Car Club of America’s Escort Endurance series for Steve Saleen of Brea.

Showing his versatility, the Anaheim resident won in all three vehicles. He finished third in the Trans Am standings after winning four races. He also won the Bendix Fast-Five Shootout, a 10-lap sprint at St. Petersburg, Fla., for Trans Am pole winners.

For Saleen, he won an Escort Endurance race at Mosport, Canada, and a truck race in Memphis.

Not that Halsmer would not like to race again in the Indianapolis 500. He has been there six times, finishing 24th in 1981 and 25th in 1982 in Frank Arciero’s car, getting bumped by a faster car after qualifying in 1980 and again in 1985, and crashing during practice in 1983 and 1984.

After the ’84 season, during which he competed in 12 races and had an eighth-place finish at Long Beach, Halsmer was voted CART’s most improved driver.

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not,” he said with a smile. “It depends on what they thought of my driving before.”

Halsmer’s 1988 plans may include Indy again, with a team owned by Russell Newman of Bartlett, Ind. Newman, who won the SCCA Formula Atlantic championship in the Road Atlanta runoffs last month, fielded a team for the first time this year with Didier Theys and Davy Jones as his drivers.

“Newman called me about driving his Lola Indy car in the middle of the season but there were conflicts with my schedule so I couldn’t do it,” Halsmer said. “If we run next year it will be only a limited schedule, however.”

The main program will probably be with Roush again, although it is not yet determined if Ford Motorsports wants to commit its No. 1 team of Halsmer and Scott Pruett to Trans Am again or challenge Toyota, Nissan and Chevrolet in IMSA’s Camel GTO series.

“Right now, I’m happy to be with Roush,” Halsmer said. “I am working with first-rate, quality people and being in the right environment is important to me. It’s definitely better running to win than being with a middle-of-the-pack operation. I also like to keep busy. I figure the more I race, the better driver I will become.”

Halsmer has been busy this year. He has driven in 31 races--13 in the Trans Am series, 4 in the Escort Endurance series, 5 truck events and 9 Camel GTP races in an early season effort by Roush to make an under-powered Ford Maxim competitive with the Porsches, Nissans and Jaguars.

“After racing in truck races, I think it may be the series of the future,” Halsmer said. “From a spectator standpoint, it has all the elements of NASCAR, with close racing, packs running together, drafting and a lot of bumping and shoving.

“They do a lot of bump-drafting where the car in back actually pushes the car in front with both of them flat-out on the throttle. It’s like one long car, and it can go faster than one car by itself. Sometimes you see the driver in the front car waving the guy behind him to close up and get on his bumper. It’s wild to watch.”

When Halsmer won the Memphis truck race, he benefited from a push by Tom Kendall, in a Nissan, that helped hold off the Archer brothers, Bobby and Tommy, who were bump-drafting in the same manner.

Halsmer, who learned to fly an airplane when he was 14 or 15 at his father’s airport in Lafayette, Ind., is still an avid pilot.

His plane is an experimental Vari-Eze, a small, single-engine two-seater that appears to be flying backwards because of its tiny front wings and a huge tail. It cruises at 165 m.p.h. and Halsmer uses it to commute from the Corona airport to races on the West Coast.

STOCK CARS--Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt will collect $754,118 at tonight’s NASCAR banquet in New York City, pushing his season earnings to $2,069,243. The three-time Cup champion from Kannapolis, N.C., collected $1,404,125 in winning 11 of 29 races on the stock car circuit. Earnhardt will also receive his 1987 driver-of-the-year award at a luncheon today at the Essex House. The luncheon host is Ki Cuyler, grandson of baseball Hall of Fame outfielder Kiki Cuyler, and Cuyro Services, Cuyler’s Pittsburgh company that specializes in the creation and marketing of corporate awards programs. . . . Fourteen Winston West drivers, including champion Chad Little, Hershel McGriff and Jim Robinson, will compete in a United States vs. Australia challenge next year. Two races, Feb. 28 at Calder Park, near Melbourne, and April 24 at Sears Point Raceway, near San Francisco, will count toward determining the winner. Bobby Allison, Kyle Petty and Mike Waltrip will also compete. The Australian race, the first major stock car event outside North America, will pay $250,000. . . . Phoenix International Raceway has been selected by NASCAR to replace Riverside International Raceway as the site of the Winston Western 500 next year. The race on the one-mile oval will be run Nov. 6. . . . George Stiles, who was competition director at Saugus Speedway for 15 years, has been named manager of the Antioch Fairgrounds Speedway in Northern California.

OFF-ROAD RACING--Rich Minga, 26, a 1600cc dune buggy driver from Lemon Grove, Calif., is the overall point champion of the High Desert Racing Assn./SCORE International series. Minga scored 769 points in out-distancing Craig Watkins, 35, of Menlo Park. Rod Hall of Reno won the heavy metal division, and Chuck Johnson of Rockford, Ill., won the mini-metal division. Class winners will be feted Saturday night at an awards banquet at the Gold Coast Hotel in Las Vegas.

MOTORCYCLES--The 20th annual El Trial de Espana, one of the nation’s premier observed trials events, will be held Sunday at La Cresta, in the Rancho California-Temecula area of Riverside county. The Schreiber Cup race for expert riders will be held Saturday on the same site. Bernie Schreiber, the 1972 world champion and current national champion from La Crescenta, will be riding a Fantic and will be a heavy favorite. Bernie, for whom the Schreiber Cup was named, spends much of his time at his home in Albertville, in the south of France. Other favorites include Kip Webb of Watsonville, a member of the United States’ Trials des Nations team, on a Merlin; Scott Head of Placerville, a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and the 1986 national champion, on a Beta; Tom Hamman of San Diego, on a Yamaha; and Kenny Leduc of Sacramento and Steve Fracy of Canada, both on Fantics. La Cresta is about 15 miles from Interstate 15, off the Clinton Keith freeway exit.