Long Beach Grand Prix Notebook : Lewis Has a Version of the Mears Incident, Too

Rick Mears was leading early in last week’s CART opener at Phoenix when he and Randy Lewis touched wheels, sending Mears into the wall and out of the race.

Mears and most observers--including the ABC television team--blamed Lewis, 42, a third-year CART campaigner from Hillsborough, Calif.

But few ever heard Lewis’ side of it.

“I’ve been getting a lot of heat,” Lewis said Friday. “I talked to Rick and he thought he was by me. I was coming out (of the turn) low. A.J. Foyt had just gone around me, and I saw Rick, so I stayed low in the groove. I knew he was there. I knew there was enough room to get by me on the outside.

“I asked him if I left him enough room and he said yes, and (that) he wouldn’t have tried to get by me if there hadn’t been enough room.

“My feeling is that he cut in a little too soon. If you look at the tapes, which I did numerous times, you’ll see there’s still quite a bit of room between Rick and the wall when we touched.

“He thought he was by me. It’s a racing mistake. I’m not trying to point the finger, but the finger got pointed at me. I feel badly that it happened but certainly not guilty.”

Comedian Jay Leno, an entry in today’s pro-celebrity race, offered some impressions after Friday’s fender-banging practice and qualifying.

“It’s a lot of fun, really,” Leno said. “This is the way people used to have fun before lawyers came around.”

While studying the entry list: “What constitutes a celebrity? I don’t recognize a lot of these people.”

To defending champion Jason Bateman, of “Valerie’s Family”: “I want to have the legal age of the race raised to 21. It’s always nice to have a 19-year-old punk kick your . . . “

His race strategy: “I’ll try to get the other celebrities in as much litigation as possible. Get ‘em tied up in court at least until the end of the race.”

Is he nervous?

“No, why? It’s not my car.”

Teo Fabi, who has competed in both worlds of open-wheel auto racing, said: “The best thing for the sport would be to combine the two.”

Fabi, who will be driving the Porsche-powered March in Sunday’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, has returned to CART competition after 3 1/2 years in Formula One.

The 5-foot 5-inch native of Milan, Italy, stunned the Indianapolis Establishment five years ago when he showed up for the first time, won the pole in record time and led the first 23 laps before a refueling malfunction ended his bid.

That season, he won four CART races, then returned home midway through an unproductive ’84 season to pick up Formula One rides that were even less successful. Yet, Fabi believes the transition is more difficult for Formula One drivers, especially because of the oval tracks.

“You have to learn, but it’s not impossible,” Fabi said. “You have to get used to the speed--that, and driving between the walls.

“You have no shifting, it’s true, but when you’re driving 220 m.p.h. it makes it very dangerous to make a mistake. In Formula One, you can make a little mistake and recover. At Indy, you make a little mistake and you’re out of control.”

One misconception, Fabi said, is that Indy is driven at top speed all the way around.

“You don’t drive flat out all the time. A corner is still a corner, and you have to drive through it.”

Fabi conceded that to combine the two forms of racing, sanctioning bodies would have to get together and adjust their rules on horsepower, chassis weight and other details. “But for the future of auto racing, it’s the way to go,” he said.

Add Fabi: Since the Long Beach format switched from Formula One to Indy cars in 1984, the motor sports press has not missed dealing with the European drivers, who were generally aloof and inaccessible.

One exception would have been Fabi, who said this week, “Some drivers think they are special and should be treated special, above the others. I think drivers are just people.

“I come to the race to drive the car and do my job. The mechanics and the press and others also come to do their jobs. So I, as the driver, am no different.”

Former Dodger, Angel, Phillie, Cub, Athletic, Yankee, White Sox and U.S. Marine Jay Johnstone is entered in today’s pro-celebrity race.

“I’ve never entertained the idea of racing, (except to) try to get by a few highway patrolmen,” he said.

The celebrity drivers must attend The Drivers’ Connection race driving school at Willow Springs in the Mojave Desert.

“I went off a turn up at Willow Springs at about 90 m.p.h.,” Johnstone said. “The only way I could describe it was exhilarating. If I’d had time to think about it, I might have been scared. I wish we could put everybody that drives the L.A. freeways through the school.”

Johnstone was one of baseball’s leading clubhouse pranksters. He thinks he might have avoided one of the new Dodgers, Kirk Gibson, who didn’t take the eyeblack-in-the-cap caper well this spring.

“Some guys you can fool around with, some you can’t,” Johnstone said. “I would have done it more in the clubhouse--and then blamed someone else.”

His race driving rivals are wary, checking their helmets for shoe polish and their cars for rubber snakes.

“There are some egos here you have to deal with,” Johnstone said. “(But) I’m working on it.”

Lyn St. James is a new member of Roush Racing’s Trans-Am team, with Scott Pruett and Deborah Gregg, this year. A veteran of the game, she said she’s never really had a male chauvinist problem with her crews.

“The only thing like that was when I had a crew chief from New Zealand,” she said. “I only knew him by Alan, and then I heard some other crews calling him Ladyman.

“I thought they were needling him for having a woman driver and I felt awful for him.

“Then I found out that was his last name: Ladyman.”