Motor Racing : Riverside Cancels Its May 1 Road Races

The International Motor Sports Assn. Camel GT sports car races scheduled for May 1 at Riverside International Raceway have been canceled, it was announced Wednesday by Dan Greenwood, track president.

That leaves only three major professional racing events at the road racing course before it closes in August to make way for a housing development and shopping mall. They are the International Race of Champions June 11, a NASCAR Winston Cup stock car race June 12 and the SCORE International off-road event Aug. 13-14.

“When we couldn’t get IMSA to bring its GTP cars out, we decided that without the big Jaguars, Porsches, Nissans and the other prototypes, we couldn’t put on a world-class event, and that’s what we want for Riverside’s last year,” Greenwood said.

Only GTU and GTO cars were scheduled for the Riverside date. A GTO car is one powered by an engine displacing more than 2.5 liters; a GTU is one with an engine displacing less than 2.5 liters. GTP cars are exotic one-of-a-kind cars built exclusively for racing.

The cancellation will deprive Southern California fans of seeing Dan Gurney’s GTO championship All-American Racers’ Toyota team, including individual winner Chris Cord of Beverly Hills, and Tom Kendall, the collegiate phenom from UCLA and La Canada, who has won the last two GTU championships.

They now will make their only appearances locally this season Oct. 23 at the Camel Grand Prix of Southern California at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

The distinction of being billed as the last sports car race at Riverside will belong to the Cal Club’s Sports Car Club of America regional and national amateur championship races July 2-4.

The decision not to have GTP cars at Riverside, which had run for nine consecutive years as the high point of the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix, was made by IMSA after the announcement by Laguna Seca Raceway officials that the Monterey Peninsula facility was dropping its IMSA weekend in favor of a world championship motorcycle road race April 10.

Riverside is the second West Coast track to cancel a scheduled appearance of GTO and GTU cars this season. The Arizona Camel GT weekend, April 16-17 at Firebird International Raceway, near Phoenix, was called off earlier this month.

Also canceled by the Riverside decision was a four-hour Firestone Firehawk sports-touring race in which former Indianapolis 500 winner Parnelli Jones was the defending champion.

Major league racing facilities, such as Riverside and Ontario Motor Speedway, which was closed in 1980, come and go, but two Southern California short tracks--Saugus Speedway and Ascot Park--just keep rolling along.

Both will open regular-season competition next week with their specialties, stock cars at Saugus and sprint cars at Ascot.

It will be the 30th consecutive season for Saugus and the 31st for Ascot, including the last 13 under the Agajanian family flag.

After a Friday night session for hobby stocks, foreign stocks and jalopies, Saugus will present a 150-lap factory stock enduro Saturday night, followed by a destruction derby.

“Say what you will about racing fans, the most popular thing we put on is the destruction derby,” said Ray Wilkings, owner of the Saugus track, a flat, one-third mile paved saucer.

California Racing Assn. sprint cars will return to Ascot Saturday night, March 19, for the third race of the young Parnelli Jones Firestone series. The first two were held last weekend at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix and both were won by Ron Shuman, the former World of Outlaws veteran from Arizona who plans to run for the CRA championship this year. Mike Sweeney finished third and second in the two events that honored former CRA President Walt James.

Ascot’s half-mile dirt oval will be the site of 29 of the 46 CRA programs this season.

MOTORCYCLES--The second round of the Spring Speedway Series is scheduled for Friday night at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. Bobby Schwartz, who won last week’s first round main event at Long Beach, is tied with Mike Faria at 20 points, followed by Sam Ermolenko with 18.

INDY CARS--Kevin Cogan, second-place finisher in the 1986 Indianapolis 500, has been named to drive the Schaefer-Machinists’ Union car in the CART Indy car series. The 31-year-old driver from Palos Verdes Estates will replace Josele Garza of Mexico, whose contract expired after the 1987 season. Scott Atchison of Bakersfield, last year’s national Super Vee champion, is also slated to drive a Machinists’ Union car in the CART opener April 10 at Phoenix.