TWO FOR THE ROAD : Perseverance Keeps Sprint-Car Tandem of John Redican and Kathy Simpson on Track Despite Constant Money Drain

Charles Dickens wrote the words 130 years ago, but John Redican and Kathy Simpson lived them on a sunny day in 1986 in the tiny California town of Imperial.

Truly for them, it was the best of times and the worst of times.

Redican, a sprint-car driver, and Simpson, a car owner, had been a team for five years with just mediocre results. They had existed on secondhand cars and get-them-where-you-can parts. But now, the Chatsworth pair had decided to roll the dice and put everything they had into a brand-new car.

It cost them $35,000 but the result was, in Redican’s view, “the prettiest, fastest, most gorgeous car I’d ever seen. We were headed for great times.”

First stop was the track at the Imperial County Fairgrounds.

Redican took off and, sure enough, on his first lap, broke the track record.

Eight laps later, he broke everything else.

Redican and fellow driver Kirk Alexander collided, leaving Redican’s $35,000 dream a nightmarish pile of junk.

“The car was totaled,” Redican said. “We were done. We’d spent everything we had. It just didn’t work out.”

For several weeks Redican, a service director for a Hollywood auto dealership, and Simpson, a Woodland Hills service station owner, moped.

Then Simpson told Redican, “You know what? We’re not going to give up that easily.”

Redican agreed.

“So we went back to scrimping and saving,” Redican said. “Fortunately, the engine in our car was not ruined and that’s $26,000 right there. Finally, we were able to buy another car for $15,000. It was delivered in a box and, five days later, we had a rolling race car.”

And two years later, Simpson won the California Racing Assn.’s Outstanding Achievement award, climaxing a period in which she and her driver, Redican, had won six main events and had finished as high as fifth in total points in 1986 among the state’s 100 registered sprint-car drivers.

Simpson was introduced to auto racing as a girl growing up in Lincoln, Neb. She got the bug from her three brothers, all of whom raced.

When Simpson was 7, her brothers were leaving on a Midwest trip around the auto-racing circuit. Simpson couldn’t bear to stay home.

So she didn’t.

She crawled into a box used to store spare parts in the back of their truck.

Sixteen hours and many miles later, the Simpson brothers discovered their little stowaway. She was quickly shipped home, but her priorities had been set.

As the years went by, she spent more and more time around the track and less and less at school.

“When I was growing up,” Simpson said, “I didn’t have time for dolls and things like that. As a little girl, I was building race cars out of wagons or anything else I could get my hands on. Going fast was the only thing I ever cared about. I don’t know why, but it’s something I’ve had all my life.”

Simpson got behind the wheel for the first time at age 12. She had been watching her brothers race when one of them came up and told her to get in the car.

Her jaw dropped to the track.

“Hey, big mouth,” her brother said. “you think you’re a driver. Well, let’s see what you can do.”

Not much.

Simpson spun out 11 times and never did quite make it around the oval track.

Her brothers, however, sent her back out and told her not to return until she did.

“Once I made it all the way around,” she recalled, “they couldn’t get me off the track. They kept flagging me, but they couldn’t get me in until I ran out of fuel.”

When she was 17, Simpson followed a boyfriend out to Southern California where she raced in powder-puff derbies, demolition derbies and anything else that involved four wheels and a track.

This was during the years when women were about as welcome around auto racing as snow and ice. They weren’t even allowed in the pit area. When Simpson raced, she had to be escorted to and from her car by a security guard.

But once the engine started, she needed no help. Simpson raced stock cars over a 13-year period, competing in a total of about 15 races.

And she won them all.

“I know that sounds weird,” she said, “but it’s true.”

She gave up stock-car racing in 1975, then got hooked on the sprint cars. She bought her first one in 1978 for $8,900.

“I didn’t know anything about them,” she said, “so I tore that car apart and put it together four times, just so I would know what it was like.”

By this point, Simpson was 32 and not about to try a comeback in an unfamiliar machine.

“At my age,” she said, “I was not going to get into something that evil.”

So she started looking around for a driver. She tried a few, but none seemed to work out.

Enter John Redican.

He also had been raised around race cars, in Arizona where his father drove midgets. Redican, 44, attended his first race around the time of his first birthday.

He started in auto racing as a mechanic, then became a driver--first with sprint cars, then midgets, then back to sprints.

He never had much success until he hooked up with Simpson.

“When she asked me to drive,” Redican said, “it was the chance to have better equipment than I had ever had before.”

Their ride together along the racing circuit was a little bumpy at first. When Redican first came over to see Simpson’s car, she told him that he could drive it, but he couldn’t change it. Not one bit. Everything was set just the way she liked it.

“I went into the house for something,” Simpson said, “and by the time I came out, he had changed everything.”

From radius rods to the fuel switch.

But once Simpson saw him drive, all was forgiven.

It seems that the Dickens line remains hauntingly real for Redican and Simpson even in the best of times. Because those also have been the poorest of times.

The most money Simpson and Redican have ever won in a single year of racing is $20,000 and that still left them $50,000 in the hole.

“Even the money you do get,” Redican said, “you turn right back into the car. You’d have to be stupid to be in this for the money.

“A lot of people think we’re stupid anyway, but we’re no different than the guy who spends his money on a boat or jet skis or some other thing on weekends. Everybody has something.”

Simpson and Redican’s financial problems came despite having run a truly economical Mom and Pop operation. Their pit crew consists of Simpson’s twin daughters, in their 20s, four men and an expert on motors who works part time. All are volunteers. The crew chief, Danny Grunkemeyer, drives to Chatsworth from Irvine to work on the car four nights a week.

Yet Redican and Simpson still figure they spend $500 to $700 a week on their hobby. The best Redican and Simpson can do for their crew is to pick up room and meal costs on the road.

Finally, the money ran out. At the end of 1988, Redican and Simpson decided that they had driven to the end of the road.

“We’d decided not to race anymore,” Redican said. “We just couldn’t afford it. We were going to sell everything and I was going to drive for someone else.”

Three days later, Redican got a call. Suddenly, it was again the best of times.

A fan of the Simpson-Redican team wanted to make a donation of a new car and two motors, a $70,000 contribution. The donor wanted no control and no input in the operation. “We were told to just keep doing what we were doing,” Simpson said. “The only stipulation was that the donor must remain anonymous.”

First, Redican got the phone back on the receiver. Then, he somehow managed to get his feet back on the ground.

Even with the unexpected benefactor, it will be a tight squeeze financially for Redican and Simpson. They already have had to spend an additional $15,000 to buy the larger trailer necessary to accommodate the new car. They still are looking for a sponsor to defray some of their costs.

As one might imagine, these are busy days at the Redican household in Chatsworth. As parts continue to arrive for the new car, Redican and his crew work night and day to get ready for the first sprint-car race of the year, next weekend in Phoenix.

Redican hopes to compete this year in all 53 U. S. sprint car events, spread out on tracks in seven states.

It won’t be easy. It never is. Both Redican and Simpson work at their regular jobs full time. Redican will sometimes have to fly to or from a distant race in order to get in another day at work. That leaves his crew to cart the car around the country by trailer.

Sometimes, it gets insane.

Sometimes, it’s worse.

One weekend, Redican raced in Hanford near Visalia on a Friday night, back in Los Angeles on Saturday, in Tucson on Sunday and Phoenix on Monday.

Then there was the night Redican crashed in a Bakersfield race on a Friday. He and his crew worked most of the night and all day Saturday to get the car back in running order. They finished at 4 p.m., hauled it into their trailer and took off for San Diego to compete in a race that night.

Not only did they make it, they broke the track record during qualifying at the San Diego facility.

Later on that evening, another driver crashed during the race. Redican was stuck on the track in his car for 45 minutes, waiting while a helicopter airlifted the other driver to a hospital.

So how did he use the time, his first free moments since his own crash the night before in Bakersfield? To sleep, of course. Right there in his car on the track with red lights flashing and helicopter blades whirling.

Redican has had his share of injuries, although he has been luckier than most. He has cracked his jaw, fractured a cheekbone, broken ribs and is coming off an injury that shattered one kneecap in six places.

Although safety measures have reduced fatalities in sprint-car racing, it remains extremely dangerous. As many as half a dozen drivers a year across the country are killed--but only one driver in the past two years has died in California.

“Everybody crashes,” Redican said. “Everybody gets hurt. Everybody. That’s part of the beast. But you put up with it because you love it so much. I’ll tell you what, there’s a whole lot of agony before you feel the thrill of victory. This is a rough damn sport. Rough. It’s not for the soft-hearted.”

Not even in the best of times.