Motor Racing Roundup : Fabi Makes Most Out of Carrying Less Fuel for Porsche Victory

The Porsche team took a gamble and Teo Fabi took advantage in Sunday’s Red Roof Inns 200 at Lexington, Ohio.

The Italian driver used his team’s risky fuel strategy perfectly and gave Porsche its first-ever Indy-car victory.

Twenty-six laps from the finish, Fabi took the lead from Al Unser Jr. and went on to his first victory since the season-finale at Phoenix in 1983.

“We saw it was going to be a very close race,” Fabi said. “On my second (pit) stop, I took only a half tank of fuel to try to pull away.

“Derrick (Walker, the Porsche team manager) decided to take that chance and it worked well. I was able to get a 22-second lead and come in later and get the rest of the fuel and still stay in front.”

With about 60,000 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course looking on, Fabi drove his Porsche-powered March 89P racer across the finish line 6.98 seconds ahead of Unser’s Chevrolet-powered Lola. It was Porsche’s 28th Indy-car race.

“What Teo actually did was a very chancy deal,” Unser said. “It caught me by surprise. . . . I understand now that he had fresh tires and half tanks.

“That was a good heads-up call by Derrick Walker or whoever made the call in his pits. When they made the third (fuel) stop, I was already history.”

The victory culminated an effort that began near the end of the 1987 season when the late Al Holbert joined with the German car manufacturer in campaigning a car on the CART-PPG Indy-car circuit.

Fabi, 34, a resident of Milan and a former Formula One competitor, earned his fifth career Indy-car victory and his second on the 2.4-mile, 15-turn road circuit at Mid-Ohio.

He started from the pole for the second time this season, leading 47 of the first 49 laps in the 84-lap, 100.5-mile event.

Unser, winless since the second race of the season, stayed with Fabi and finally moved into the lead on the backstretch, on lap 48.

He built leads of up to 2.21 seconds over Fabi, who made his final scheduled pit stop on lap 57. Most of the lead vanished after Unser pitted the next time around, and Fabi shot past Unser at the end of the backstretch on lap 59.

Michael Andretti finished a distant third, followed by series point leader Emerson Fittipaldi of Brazil and defending series champion Danny Sullivan, the last driver on the lead lap.

P.J. Jones, 20-year-old son of Parnelli Jones, won his first American Racing Series event, beating Mike Groff in a 32-lap race at Mid-Ohio by 1.238 seconds.

In another support race for the Red Roof Inns 200, Mark Smith of McMinnville, Ore., led all the way in winning a 25-lap SCCA Bosch-Volkswagen Super Vee series race.

Also Sunday, it was announced that the contract between CART and Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course was extended three years, through the 1992 season.

Four-time Winston champion Don Prudhomme won the featured race at the NHRA’s U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park at Clermont, Ind.

Prudhomme defeated John Force in the final, covering the quarter-mile in 5.198 seconds at 271.57 m.p.h. in his Pontiac to win the eight-man special Funny Car race that was contested as part of qualifying.

Darrell Gwynn and Dick LaHaie lead the quickest 16-car Top Fuel field in NHRA history. Gwynn, claimed the top spot with a time of 4.981 seconds at 282.48 m.p.h., just ahead of LaHaie’s 4.983 and 285.44.

At Donington, England, Jean-Louis Schlesser of France and Jochen Mass of West Germany drove their Mercedes to a 52-second victory in a World Sports Prototype Championship auto race.

The victory wrapped up the championship for Sauber Mercedes, which has won five of the six endurance races so far this season.