Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Indy Winner Mears, Eddie Hill Fail to Make All-American Team

Newly crowned champions Danny Sullivan, Bill Elliott and Geoff Brabham head a group of 12 drivers selected to the auto racing All-American team in balloting by members of the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Assn.

The team, which also includes 8-time sprint car choice Steve Kinser, is almost as noteworthy for the drivers left off as those selected.

Ten drivers were named from specific categories, and there were two at-large choices. The team: Open wheel (Indy cars)--Sullivan, Louisville, Ky., and Al Unser Jr., Albuquerque, N.M.; stock cars (NASCAR)--Elliott, Dawsonville, Ga., and Rusty Wallace, Charlotte, N.C.; road racing--Brabham, Noblesville, Ind., and Scott Pruett, Roseville, Calif.; short track racing--Kinser, Bloomington, Ind., and Rich Vogler, Indianapolis; drag racing--Bob Glidden, Whiteland, Ind., and Kenny Bernstein, Newport Beach; at-large, Tom Kendall, Flintridge-La Canada, and Robby Gordon, Orange.

Among those not selected was drag racer Eddie Hill, Wichita Falls, Tex., who became the first top-fuel driver in history to break the 5-second mark with a 4.99-second run for the quarter-mile in an International Motor Racing Assn. meet at the Texas Motorplex track, near Dallas.

Hill later lowered the mark to 4.936 at Houston in a National Hot Rod Assn. event. The former drag boat record-holder also set a drag racing speed record of 288.73 m.p.h. earlier in the season at Gainesville, Fla.

Others left out included Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears of Bakersfield, who set a qualifying record of 219.198 m.p.h. at Indianapolis before winning the race and won a record $804,853; and drag racer Joe Amato of Old Forge, Pa., who won his second NHRA top-fuel championship by winning 4 times and reaching the final round 9 times in 16 events.

Sullivan, in one of Roger Penske’s Chevrolet-powered Penske chassis, and Elliott, in his family-owned Ford Thunderbird, won their first championships in their long and illustrious careers.

Brabham, a former Can-Am champion, won the International Motor Sports Assn. Camel GTP title with a record 8 straight wins in a Nissan prototype prepared by Don Devendorf of El Segundo. The Australian native won 9 of 15 IMSA races, and added a win in the season-ending World Challenge race that matched GTP and European Group C cars and drivers at Tampa, Fla.

Kinser, who is currently racing in Australia, won 26 races en route to his eighth World of Outlaws sprint car championship.

Unser won 4 Indy car races, the same as Sullivan, and also won his second International Race of Champions series. Wallace, by winning 4 of the final 5 NASCAR races, finished only 24 points behind Elliott in the Winston Cup standings.

All the other selectees won various national championships--Pruett the IMSA GTO, Vogler his fifth United States Auto Club midget series, Glidden his ninth NHRA pro stock and Bernstein his fourth consecutive NHRA funny car title.

The at-large selections are a pair of precocious Southern California youngsters.

Off-road driver Gordon, 19, is the youngest ever named to the AARWBA team after winning championships in 2 series in different type vehicles--the High Desert Racing Assn./SCORE desert series for full-size pickups in which he drove a converted Ford hay truck, and the Mickey Thompson stadium series for Super 1600s in which he drove a single-seat buggy.

Gordon replaces Kendall as the youngest All-American. Kendall was 20 when he was was selected in 1986 and this year he repeated by winning his third straight IMSA GTU championship after switching from Mazda to a Chevrolet Beretta.

Members of the team will be honored Saturday night, Jan. 7, at the AARWBA banquet at the Spruce Goose pavilion in Long Beach. At that time, the driver who polled the most votes will receive the Jerry Titus Memorial Award. Titus, a magazine editor who doubled as a professional driver, was killed in a racing accident in 1970.

NECROLOGY--Herb Parks, 39, who was Don Garlits’ crew chief for 10 years during which Big Daddy won 7 drag racing national championships, was killed in a qualifying accident during the National Hot Rod Assn.’s Snowbird Open in Bradenton, Fla. Parks, who left Garlits 2 years ago to work for Dan Pastorini, was hit by his own dragster as driver Rocky Epperly backed up after a burnout. Parks died the next morning in a Bradenton hospital of head injuries.

Larry Bisceglia, a former Long Beach racing enthusiast who gained fame for being the first spectator in line for 37 consecutive Indianapolis 500 races, died in a nursing home in Yuma, Ariz., at 90. Bisceglia’s last appearance at the 500 was in 1986.

INDY CARS--The Japan Grand Prix, opening race of the 1989 schedule in Tokyo, has been canceled because of pressure from Formula One officials, who threatened to drop Japan from the F1 schedule if they held a “competitive” Indy car race. The season will now start April 9 with the Checker 200 in Phoenix. . . . Alfa-Romeo, a famous European racing marque, will enter the Indianapolis 500 for the first time with a March chassis powered by an Alfa-Ferrari engine. Roberto Guerrero, who asked for and received his release from Vince Granatelli’s team, will probably be the driver.

MOTORCYCLE TRIALS--Mark Manniko of Littleton, Colo., the third-ranked expert rider in the country, won his second straight El Trial de Espana in easy fashion before an enthusiastic crowd at Lucerne Valley. Manniko, riding a Fantic, was followed by Kim Webb of Watsonville, Calif., also on a Fantic, and Tom Hamann, Southern California’s top rider from San Diego, who rode a Beta. Manniko’s 18-year-old brother, Kevin, won the advanced class over Ed Stovin of San Diego.

DRAG RACING--Kim LaHaie, who was crew chief for her father when Dick LaHaie won the National Hot Rod Assn. top fuel championship in 1987, has left the team “to pursue other interests.” Kim, who was named crew chief of the year by Car Craft, has been with her father’s team since 1972.