RACING CHALLENGE : To Most Drivers, Phoenix Raceway Is a Superspeedway in Classification Only

In the Winston Cup scheme of stock car racing, there are three kinds of tracks--superspeedway ovals of a mile or more, short-track ovals of less than a mile, and road courses.

That would put Phoenix International Raceway, a flawed oval of one mile in length with a crook in its backstretch, in the superspeedway category.

That’s not the way the drivers see it.

The record books will show that the winner of today’s $450,000 Checker 200--the first Winston Cup race in the track’s 24-year history--won it on a superspeedway, but the winner and all the drivers who finish behind him will probably say differently.

“I’d say Phoenix is more like a stretched-out short track, more like Martinsville (.526 of a mile) than anywhere else we run,” Geoff Bodine said after running a lap at 123.203 m.p.h. in his Chevrolet Monte Carlo to win the pole for today’s 500-kilometer race.

Bodine may be prejudiced in making that comparison because he won his first Winston Cup race at the Virginia track in 1984 and has won 4 pole positions there.

Others likened it to Milwaukee, where the Indy cars traditionally race the week after the Indianapolis 500, or to such off-beat short tracks as Birmingham, Ala., a 5/8-mile fairgrounds track where Davey Allison and Mike Alexander honed their talents before jumping into Winston Cup competition.

“It doesn’t make any difference what kind of a track it is, or how many guys have never seen it,” Allison said. “These guys are so talented that after a few laps, they know as much as they need to know.

“Most of us tackle strange tracks between races at places like Saugus or Bakersfield or Ascot Park and in no time at all we’ll be lapping as fast or faster than the regulars.”

The only time Bodine had ever seen the Phoenix track before last week was on television.

“It looked wider and faster on TV, but I like it,” he said. “It’s a different kind of track than we see all year. It’s unique in its style, its corners are different and there is very little banking. On our other mile ovals, the banking is steep.

“A strange track and a new configuration is a challenge to us and we (Winston Cup drivers) like challenges. The change is good, we need something different. It’s good for NASCAR.”

When Bodine saw races at Phoenix on TV, it was Indy cars that were running. Although this is the track’s first Winston Cup race, it has hosted 44 Indy car races since 1964.

Phoenix was awarded today’s race when Riverside International Raceway closed its doors and dropped off the schedule after last June’s race. The site for next June’s race has not been officially decided as yet, but all indications point to Sears Point Raceway, north of San Francisco.

Although this will be the first NASCAR championship race at Phoenix International, it will not be the first in Arizona. Three Grand National races in the 1950s, won by stock car pioneers Marshall Teague, Tim Flock and Buck Baker, were held at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, and Danny Letner won one in 1955 at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds.

Today’s event, next to last on the 29-race NASCAR schedule, could turn into a race within a race.

As much or more interest will be centered on the championship struggle between a pair of hard-driving redheads, Bill Elliott of Blairsville, Ga., and Rusty Wallace of St. Louis, as there will be on the race winner.

Elliott holds a 79-point lead in the battle for the $400,000 end-of-season bonus. Neither has won the series before, not even Elliott in his $2.4-million season of 1985 when he built up a huge lead by midseason, only to falter in the stretch and lose to Darrell Waltrip.

Wallace, who is challenging for the championship for the first time in his 5-year NASCAR career, has won the last 3 races to close in on Elliott after all but dropping out of contention with two disastrous midseason failures.

Going into the Busch 500 last August at Bristol, Tenn., Wallace had the points lead, but a blown tire sent him barrel-rolling down the front stretch in practice, destroying his car and sending him to the hospital. Although he was able to start the race, Wallace needed relief help from Larry Pearson, and his ninth-place finish dropped him behind Elliott, who finished second.

Two races later, in the Miller 400 at Richmond, Va., Wallace suffered the worst scenario of all--he wrecked on the first lap in a collision with Bodine and did not get back in the race. It dropped him 119 points behind Elliott.

“That was the killer, no doubt about it,” Wallace said. “We’ve been playing catch-up ever since, but it’s going to take a piece of bad luck on Bill’s part for us to make it, either here and in Atlanta.”

The Richmond debacle was triggered by a first-lap accident involving Richard Petty and Lake Speed. The yellow caution flag came out, but as in all Winston Cup races, the drivers raced full bore back to the start-finish line.

As Wallace crossed the stripe, a car in front of him slowed perceptibly and Wallace veered to the left to avoid a crash. Bodine crashed heavily into Wallace’s slowing Pontiac.

Barry Dotson, crew chief for drag racer Raymond Beadle’s Blue Max team, was adamant--and still is.

“If we don’t win the championship, you can point the finger right at Geoff Bodine as the cause,” Dotson said. “That was a 100-point jolt.”

Today, Wallace will be lined up alongside Bodine on the front row of the 43-car field.

Each driver who leads at least 1 lap (of the 312-lap race) will receive 5 points, so the pressure would appear to be on Wallace to get his as quickly as possible. How will Bodine respond if he is challenged from the outside as the pack thunders toward the trick first turn?

“I’m certainly not going to step aside for Rusty just because he’s in the running for the championship.” Bodine said. “I’m in a points race, too, for fifth place, and that’s the difference between $85,000 and $70,000, so we’ll go in there racing.”

Bodine is currently sixth, 61 points behind Hendrick Motorsports teammate Ken Schrader, and only 41 ahead of Waltrip, a third Hendrick driver.

“Of course, if something happens between Rusty and me, I’m sure you’ll hear them putting the blame on me,” Bodine said with smile.

The animosity that stemmed from the Richmond accident seems to have dissipated, however.

Two races ago, at North Wilkesboro, N.C., the same pair had a fender-banging battle on the last lap in which each of them bumped the other before Wallace held on to win. Bodine finished third.

“Geoff got aggressive and I got aggressive right back,” Wallace said. “That’s all there was to it, plain and simple. There was no retaliation sort of thing. When the race ended, Geoff was grinning and waved at me. It was what racing’s all about.”

Wallace, noting that the winner of the race has to get the 5 bonus points even if he only leads on lap 312, said he expected to take a conservative approach in the early going.

“From what we’ve seen during practice, Phoenix isn’t the type of track where you’ll see much passing up high, which is where I’ll be at the start,” Wallace said. “What passing will be done will probably be down low. We want to be strong at the start, but we don’t want to mess up early on. We may be running out of miracles, but the plain and simple fact is that we’ve got to win.”

In the last 3 races, during which Wallace cut Elliott’s lead from 124 to 79, Wallace has fallen a lap or more behind each time before coming back to win.

Wallace might be closer to the lead if it weren’t for the consistency of Elliott’s Ford Thunderbird. In the last 14 races, Elliott has won 4 times and never finished worse than eighth--and eighths here and at Atlanta, even if Wallace won both races, would make him the Winston Cup champion.

“We’ll go into this race like we always do, to win,” Elliott said. “The worse thing we could do would be to put ourselves in a ‘Let’s just finish ahead of Rusty’ situation. It just wouldn’t work.”

Elliott is already assured of a $30,000 bonus for winning the most poles this season. When Bodine took the pole for today’s race, it left Elliott with 6 and runner-up Alan Kulwicki with 4 and only one race remaining.

Jim Thirkettle of Sylmar, who has been driving at Phoenix for so many years that he could probably get around the track blindfolded, defeated 5 Winston Cup drivers and all his West Coast peers to win the AC Delco 300, final event of the Southwest Tour season, before an estimated 30,000 fans.

Thirkettle, 43, is a 3-time winner of the Copper World stock car race held here. He collected $7,743 for the 186-mile race and averaged 77.428 m.p.h. The pace was slowed by 12 caution periods for 56 laps.

Roman Calczynski, 37, of Sepulveda, finished second and won the Southwest Tour championship after finishing second the past 2 seasons. Pole-sitter Mike Alexander finished third in the race, the only Winston Cup driver to make it to the end although Dale Earnhardt led 75 laps before dropping out.