Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Young Robby Gordon Is Going to Do Some Trucking

What’s a teen-ager to do after he has already been named to auto racing’s All-American team and has sat on the awards dais with the likes of Danny Sullivan, Bill Elliott, Al Unser Jr. and Geoff Brabham?

“Someday I’d like to sit alongside Danny Sullivan and Little Al again,” Robby Gordon said--and he didn’t mean at an All-American team awards banquet. He meant in the front row at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indy 500.

Gordon, who turned 20 Jan. 2, had earlier been named to the 1988 American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Assn. All-American team for his exploits in off-road racing, the same background that catapulted Rick Mears to 3 Indy 500 victories. Gordon, who has been winning motor races of one kind or another since he was 9, will stick with off-roading this year but his sights are definitely on Indy cars.

This year he will run a state-of-the-art Toyota truck in the Mickey Thompson Gran Prix stadium series, which opens Jan. 21 at Anaheim Stadium, and a Ford truck in the High Desert Racing Assn./SCORE International desert series. Last year, Gordon won his class title in the Thompson series, driving an unlimited Super 1600 buggy, and won the HDRA/SCORE pickup truck class driving a converted 1966 Ford hay truck.

Gordon, who lives in Orange, is yet another of the second-generation drivers who are challenging their parents on the race track. Gordon’s father, Bob, is a champion off-road driver who won the $10,000 Toyota True Grit award last season for the fastest average speed for the desert racing season. He also won in the 2-seater class in the Baja 1,000 and the season championship. In stadium racing, the elder Gordon won the Super 1,600 title in 1983 and shared it in 1985 with Jerry Welchel.

As might be expected, Robby got into off-road racing with his father, but not before he had won trophies on his own in mini-bike motocross. At 13 he rode an 80cc Kawasaki to victory in the Golden State Series, earning a spot in the World Mini Grand Prix at Ponca City, Okla., where he finished second.

“As soon as I turned 16 and could get my driver’s license, my dad said it was time to get off my motorcycle and start racing with him,” Robby said.

“I’d busted up a few bones and had some bad spills and my folks wanted me to quit motocross, so my dad said he’d get me a buggy. I’d ridden with my dad when he went prerunning so I had a good idea how to drive in the desert. When I started racing, we had two cars, a single-seater that I drove and the 2-seater that dad drove.”

Gordon finished second in the first desert race he was in, the Great Mojave 250, but was penalized for failing to stop at a road crossing and was dropped to fourth.

It wasn’t his first brush with authority. When he was little more than a toddler, the Gordon family lived in Lakewood and Robby had a little bike, complete with training wheels, that he rode around the neighborhood.

“While dad was at work, I’d ride up and down the streets, on the sidewalks, everywhere. There was this one woman who didn’t like me and one day she called the police. Looking back, I can understand why, because I’d run across her lawn and through her flowers. The police came and picked me up and took me to the station. They wouldn’t let me go until my dad came and signed for me.”

After turning 17, young Gordon won the Frontier 500 with Butch Arciero as his co-driver, becoming the youngest driver to win a major desert off-road race. Two weeks later he won his first stadium race, driving a Super 1,600 buggy, at the Orange Show Stadium in San Bernardino.

In 1987, the Gordons formed a father-son team and won the Parker 400 overall in a 2-seat Chenowth-Porsche buggy. Robby also won the Baja 500 with Malcolm Smith and finished second in the Baja 1,000 while driving a truck solo for Jim Venable. He was named rookie of the year in HDRA/SCORE.

His performance last year in winning the stadium buggy title earned Gordon a step up to Cal Wells’ championship Toyota stadium truck team as a teammate of Ivan (Ironman) Stewart. The team will be seeking its 7th straight series Manufacturers Cup title this season.

Gordon is taking over for Steve Millen, who is leaving the Toyota team after 6 years to team with John Morton in a GTO Nissan in the International Motor Sports Assn. series. Millen won the individual championship in 1987 and 1988.

“Driving a truck in the tight constraints of a stadium is a lot different from driving a little buggy,” Gordon said. “I’ve done some testing on the Toyota test track in Diamond Bar and I feel comfortable in it. It’s harder to handle, but I’m used to driving a truck in the desert so it’s not entirely new to me.”

The test track was built on a Frank Arciero construction site to the specific dimensions of a Mickey Thompson stadium course.

“The big difference is that in a stadium, you’re wheel to wheel all the time, but it’s sometimes easier to pass than in the desert,” Gordon said. “In a stadium, if the guys ahead of you get bottled up, you can go around four or five guys at one time. In the desert, if you’re in equal cars, you have to really work to get by a guy.”

Robby is following his father into the business world, too. The Bob Gordon Feed Co. supplies feed to all quarter horse and thoroughbred race tracks in California. The Robby Gordon Feed Co. supplies feed to independent horse owners.

“I’m just a small feed company compared to my dad. I’ve got one client who has about a hundred horses, but most of them have one or two.”

Racing nearly every weekend prevented the younger Gordon from a career in high school sports, although he is built like a prep blocking back.

“When you’re prerunning during the week and racing weekends, it’s all you can do to keep up in class. I tried football for one season at El Modena High, but I had to give it up.”

The elder Gordon--before he got the racing bug--was the winning pitcher on Long Beach’s 1967 Connie Mack baseball team that beat Nashville, Tenn., for the world championship.

The Gordons have raced against each other only once, in the 1986 Frontier 500, in 2-seater buggies. Robby teamed with Arciero, his father with Tim Crabtree.

“We finished 1-2 in class and overall,” Robby said. “We pitted side by side and when we came in together it was real exciting. I didn’t actually race against my dad. When I was in our car, Tim (Crabtree) was in theirs, and when dad took over, Butch (Arciero) got in our car. We switched back and forth for the lead and they were in front 10 miles from the finish when they got a flat. We won by about 3 minutes.

“When I turned the car over to Butch, I climbed in the chase truck and followed them to help out if Butch needed anything. That way, I got to really see them racing. It was great watching my dad driving in the desert. He can really haul.”

Robby will be driving the desert truck for Venable again this season, but he will have a new Ford truck instead of the ’66 hay truck he won with last year.

“That hay truck got a lot of publicity because Venable had really used it to haul feed, but it was practically an all-new race truck when I got in it,” Gordon said. “It’s still capable of winning but Venable has a new one on order that I’ll start testing before the season starts.”

The HDRA/SCORE season will open Jan. 28 with the Parker 400 along the California-Arizona border.

SPRINT CARS--Champion Ron Shuman of the California Racing Assn. and car owner Ed Ulyate will receive $20,000 for winning the Parnelli Jones-Firestone season championship over 4-time runner-up Mike Sweeney. Lealand McSpadden won 15 races to 14 for Shuman but McSpadden did not race the full CRA schedule. The awards banquet is Saturday night at the Irvine Marriott Hotel.

MOTOCROSS--The Golden State Nationals will be at the Sandhill Ranch course in Brentwood, Calif., this weekend.

LAND SPEED--Les Leggitt, 48, of Garden Grove, has been elected president of the Southern California Timing Assn. The SCTA season will open April 30 at El Mirage Dry Lake. Leggitt has held 10 records of more than 200 m.p.h. at Bonneville and has owned and built two open-wheeled lakesters that ran over 300. . . . Lucille Adams, of Hermosa Beach, who was chief mechanic for the 200-m.p.h. Chevy Camaro driven by her husband, Reese Adams, has died of cancer. The car, powered by a 327 cubic inch engine, was named Rat Sass, and was home-built in the Adams garage.

NECROLOGY--Services for veteran racer Jim Hurtubise, who died last Friday after suffering a heart attack near his home in Port Arthur, Tex., will be held Saturday at Indianapolis. Hurtubise, 56, drove in 10 Indianapolis 500s from 1960 to 1974.