Motor Racing : Teammate Is Also a Rival for Brabham

Geoff Brabham has won seven of the nine Camel GT races in his Nissan GTP-ZXT prototype this year, a record that would seem to assure him of a second International Motor Sports Assn. championship.

But he’d better take a quick look over his shoulder.

It won’t be a Jaguar, Porsche or Toyota driver he’ll see, but rather his teammate, Chip Robinson.

Of Brabham’s seven wins, Robinson has shared in six. The only time they raced in separate cars, Brabham won and Robinson finished fourth at Lime Rock, Conn. So Brabham’s lead over Robinson is only 151-147. No one else is close.

Brabham has received most of the attention, however, because he is usually the starting and finishing driver in endurance events, with Robinson handling the middle portion. Also, Brabham’s streak of eight consecutive wins last year earned him driver-of-the-year laurels in the Nissan, which was built and maintained in Don Devendorf’s Electromotive Engineering shop in El Segundo.

But for most of the remaining IMSA season, starting with Sunday’s G.I. Joe’s Camel Gran Prix, a 300-kilometer sprint, at Portland International Raceway, Nissan team manager R. W. (Kas) Kastner is turning them loose.

“We will work together until the green flag drops,” Robinson said. “Then whatever happens, happens. But we won’t take any chances passing each other in the last five laps if there’s a danger we could take one or both cars out.

“Winning both the driver’s and manufacturer’s championships is too important to Nissan to take chances like that.”

Both drivers are proven winners at Portland, Ore.

Last year, Brabham led a Nissan 1-2 finish with teammate John Morton second. And the year before, Robinson won, but in a Porsche 962 entered by the late Al Holbert.

“This could be one of our toughest races this year,” Robinson said. “The Toyotas should be very fast and since the race is short, their durability factor may not be a problem. And both Jaguars, especially the turbo, should do well there, too.”

The Toyotas, developed in Dan Gurney’s All American Racers shop in Santa Ana, have shown signs of breaking into the winner’s circle in their first year of GTP racing. Twice, at Road Atlanta and Lime Rock, Conn., Drake Olson put the Toyota on the pole.

“I think we can see that we have a strong team in Drake and Juan (Manual Fangio II),” Gurney said. “We were the fastest car on the track for a while at both Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta.”

Problems with turbo boost in the Group C car that led to a long pit stop dropped the Olson-Fangio team to third place at Watkins Glen. At Road Atlanta, Olson was running with the leaders when he was forced off the track by a slower car. The Toyota finished fifth, a lap down.

Willy T. Ribbs and Rocky Moran will be in a second Toyota, a newer model Eagle HF89. Each car is powered by the 2.1-liter Toyota turbo engine.

Jim Busby’s Porsche team has handed Nissan its only two defeats this year, but at Portland the team will have a new water-cooled 962 for John Andretti and Bob Wollek to share.

Jaguar, which won the manufacturer’s championship by a single point over Nissan last year, will have a new XJR-10 turbo and the six-liter normally aspirated XJR V-12 with Davy Jones, Jan Lammers, Price Cobb and John Nielsen probably trading off driving assignments.

MOTORCYCLES--Speedway fans get a bonus this week with two shows at Ascot Park, the regular weekly program tonight on the short South Bay Stadium oval and the California Best Pairs championship Saturday night on the quarter-mile main track. The pairs is a substitute show for the annual USA vs. the World team matches, which was canceled because of unavailability of foreign riders.

Billy Hamill of San Marino, runaway leader of the speedway standings, added to his list of accomplishments last week when he won the Long Beach round of qualifying for the United States Speedway championships. Hamill was followed by Bobby Schwartz, former world pairs champion, and England’s Phil Collins and Mike Faria. In season-long standings, which include all four speedway tracks, Hamill has 5,201 points to 4,666 for national champion Steve Lucero, 4,053 for Schwartz and 4,026 for Faria.

Racing will return to the Orange County Fairgrounds Friday night after a week off while Long Beach hosted the U.S. qualifying races.

DRAG RACING--The National Hot Rod Assn.’s traveling circus, which is headquartered in Glendora, will return West this weekend for the California Nationals at Sears Point International Raceway, north of San Francisco. It will be race No. 11 of a 19-race season that will conclude with the Winston Finals, Oct. 26-29, at Pomona.

Palmdale is a long way from Santa Ana, but 1959 is a long way from 1989 and that’s what the AC-Delco Santa Ana Memorial Nostalgia Drags are all about. Cars and drivers from before 1960 at the original Santa Ana drag strip will gather Saturday and Sunday at the Los Angeles County Raceway in Palmdale for a weekend of nostalgic racing. Among the combos will be Art Chrisman and the Hustler 1 and Joaquin Arnett and the Bean Bandit.

MOTOCROSS--Round 5 of the Continental Motosport Club’s Dodge Truck summer series will be held Sunday at Sunrise Park in Adelanto.

STOCK CARS--Orange Show Speedway will be the site of a Twin 50s race for sportsman cars Saturday night, the second in a round-robin series with drivers from Saugus and Cajon Speedways. Dave Phipps won the opener last week at Saugus for the third year in a row. The series will conclude next week at Cajon. . . . Street stocks will headline Saturday night programs at Saugus and Cajon, with Saugus also having a destruction derby.

Earl Cox, 49, will go for his third straight win Sunday night at Ascot Park in the pro stock feature of the Curb Motorsports Winston Racing Series program. Also on the schedule is a Cops and Robbers Demolition Derby matching area police officers against Ascot regulars. . . . Ventura Raceway will have street stocks Friday night.

SPRINT CARS--The California Racing Assn. series will continue Friday night at Kings Speedway in Hanford and Saturday night at Santa Maria Speedway. . . . Mini sprints and modified midgets will race Saturday night at Ventura Raceway.

MEMORABILIA--Items from the personal research library of the late Floyd Clymer, one of the most renowned automotive historians, will be for sale this weekend by motorcycle enthusiast Dean Hensley at 2670 E. Walnut St., just west of San Gabriel Blvd., in Pasadena. Some of the books, papers, periodicals and posters from the collection date back to 1890. The sale will start today and continue through Sunday.

FORMULA ONE--Austrian Gerhard Berger, who finished third in the Grand Prix standings last year, will leave Ferrari to replace former world champion Alain Prost on the McLaren-Honda team next season. Prost, currently leading in points, recently announced that he will leave McLaren because of personality conflicts with his teammate, world champion Ayrton Senna of Brazil. Prost has not announced his team plans, however.