High Speed, Low Yield : For the steurer Family, Stock Car Racing Is Not an Easy Way to Make a Fast Buck

In a time and place where we seem to be only a heartbeat away from having answering machines for our cellular car phones, the Steurer auto racing family is a breath of, well, of carbon monoxide. But nice, simple privately owned carbon monoxide. This is a family with a burning devotion to expensive machinery. But they also have very limited funds.

The cast:

Glen Steurer--The driver. A fearless sort. “I’ve had three broken ribs, a broken thumb and got burned pretty bad on my leg once. Nothing serious,” he says. “Those are all things that can happen to you playing on a swing set.” His kids probably wear asbestos suits at the playground.

Mike Steurer--The chief mechanic and pit crew chief. Thinks the underdog role is for the dogs. “We finance everything ourselves. We compete against guys with million-dollar budgets and we finish 11th,” he says. “It feels good for a minute because we got no help, but then you say, ‘Hell, I still finished 11th , and 11th stinks!’ ”

Earl Steurer--The father. He got his boys interested in auto racing and now spends a lot of time wondering why. “It’s really a stupid thing,” he says. “It gets in your blood. We tried to quit a few times, but we came right back to racing. It’s really a stupid thing.”

Their biggest success in 14 years of racing came last weekend when Glen drove to a fifth-place finish at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, earning $14,000 and a $10,000 bonus for being the top finisher in the Winston International Australia-United States Challenge Cup. Steurer finished fourth in the Calder Cup race in Australia in February and his fifth-place finish at Sears Point locked up the overall championship.

After the race, however, the Steurers got the kind of news they’ve grown accustomed to. The $10,000 bonus would be paid at a formal NASCAR dinner and awards banquet. In December. What they got after the race was a gigantic, plastic make-believe check, the kind that make game-show hostesses smile like crocodiles when they are presented.

“The giant fake check is real nice,” Mike Steurer said. “I’m sure we can buy a lot of engine parts with it.”

This is the sort of thing the Steurers have battled since the early days, when Glen and Mike bought a 1964 Chevy and raced it at Saugus Speedway, alternating driving duties from night to night.

“It was an announcer’s nightmare,” said then-announcer and now NASCAR Western Operations head Owen Kearns. “I’d have binoculars, trying to figure out which one of them was driving the car.”

But setting up the car on successive nights for two different drivers--changing springs and shock absorbers to suit each one’s driving habits--became too much trouble. “We just couldn’t afford it,” Mike Steurer said. So he slid under the car and held wrenches in his hands and his younger brother slid into the seat and held the steering wheel in his hands.

“It was a good move,” Mike said. “Glen was a better driver than I was. He was more aggressive. And I knew more about the car.”

By 1976 the Steurer family had become well-known in West Coast racing circles, and they began to move up in class. In 1977 Glen set a track record at Riverside International Raceway for a NASCAR Sportsman stock car. Other Riverside track records fell to the Steurers in 1979, 1980 and 1983. But as the records fell and the speeds increased, the costs involved in preparing a competitive car soared.

They sought sponsorship from everybody except pastry bakers. And with one exception, they got the same reaction you’d expect from decent parents if their young son asked for a chain saw and a frothing pit bull for Christmas. No.

The lone sponsor who saw the potential in the Steurer family was Buick, which agreed to provide them with about $9,000 in body parts for the 1988 Regal they are now assembling.

“Money is holding us back,” said Mike, who lives in Sylmar. “It has for a long time, but even more so now.”

Moving up to the big time means leaving the NASCAR Winston West series and jumping onto the main NASCAR circuit. That would mean racing against the nation’s most famous drivers, Richard Petty and the Allison family and Cale Yarborough and the rest of the NASCAR giants who talk with Southern drawls and consider opossum the finest of all post-race meals.

The Steurers already have run against the big boys at Riverside. And they found out that they belonged. In 1985, Glen, who lives in Simi Valley, finished first among West Coast drivers and 11th overall in two NASCAR Winston Cup races. In 1986, he again finished first among West Coast drivers and 10th overall in the Winston Cup race at Riverside.

“It costs $35,000 or $40,000 to set up a car and be ready to race each week on the NASCAR circuit,” Mike Steurer said. “The top 20 teams, the Pettys and Allisons and the rest, all have a minimum million-dollar-a-year sponsorship.” We sent out hundreds and hundreds of resumes and requests for financial help, and we got maybe a handful of replies at all.”

Through it all, however, through the penny-pinching and the long nights of free labor they spend preparing the equipment, the Steurers don’t want to be seen as complainers. They race mostly because they love the rush.

“I love to compete, and golf is not competing,” Glen Steurer said. “Racing gets your blood pumping and your adrenaline flowing like nothing else in the world.”

But 32-year-old Glen and 35-year-old Mike, who are also partners in a dry wall construction company and are forced to do all the mechanical work at night in their father’s Granada Hills garage, know they cannot chase their dream forever. Earl Steurer knows it, too.

“We just keep trying,” Mike said. “It’s like rolling the dice in Vegas. We keep hoping the right person will see us and help us, but you can only roll the dice so many times before you . . . “

“Before you crap out,” said Earl.