Freewheeling Competition : Racing: The fifth annual Palm Springs Vintage Grand Prix, which has risen in prestige every year, is attracting an impressive group of names and cars for an automotive weekend.

On Thursday, Rolling Hills businessman John Delane will step into the narrow cockpit of his 29-year-old Lotus 18 Formula Jr. to begin a weekend of vintage car racing in Palm Springs. The blue-and-white 1960 Lotus is a single-seater built in England and has a top speed of about 130 m.p.h. and a value equal to a comfortable annual wage.

Delane is one of several hundred drivers of vintage competition cars who will take part in the annual Palm Springs Vintage Grand Prix. The street festival of speed, nostalgia and car worship, sponsored this year by Avanti Automotive Corp., has become a “must do” for Southern California car buffs.

Avanti, for those with short memories, is the sole survivor of the defunct Studebaker Corp. Avanti has a history in Palm Springs through the late famed designer Raymond Loewy, who drew the car at his home there. The Avanti that was Loewy’s personal car will be on hand during the Grand Prix weekend.

The Vintage Grand Prix is in its fifth year. Though the races are the most visible parts of the event, they aren’t its only attractions.

Equally interesting are a high-dollar car auction, a two-day automotive beauty pageant called concours d’elegance, nostalgia drag racing on a closed city street and the final round of a professional single-seat, open-wheel (fenderless) class of modern cars called Formula Russell.

Delane is probably typical of most vintage car competitors when he admits to having a Walter Mitty attraction to racing.

“When I was 16,” he says, “my family moved from Santa Maria (Calif.) to France. That was in 1958. And in the spring I crammed myself into the back of a 356 Porsche coupe and went to the 24-hour race at Le Mans with some neighbors. It was wonderful, and I was bitten big-time by the car bug.”

Delane describes himself as conservative--a label that may suit his role as a 44-year-old husband, father and CEO of Del-Jen Inc., an international company with headquarters in Palos Verdes that does contract work for the U.S. military. Because of the pressures of business and family, wheel-to-wheel racing wasn’t part of Delane’s life until a few years ago.

“What I like the most about vintage racing,” he says, “is that it’s the perfect hobby for me. My work is often tedious and filled with administrative details, and being a weekend racer in an old car on skinny tires completely absorbs me so I don’t think about business.”

Racing on skinny tires, the same sizes used on competition cars during the ‘50s and ‘60s, is important because skinny tires slide, drift and generally react the way modern racing slicks do, only at speeds far lower than those of the cars that compete in faster, higher-stress events.

“Vintage racing is more about the cars than their drivers because most of the cars have become pieces of art and bigger parts of history than most of the drivers,” says Delane.

Many fans agree that each car has a lore that is painstakingly researched and can often be recited by owners. That doesn’t mean all the cars are more famous than their owners. The Palm Springs vintage weekend, which has risen in prestige every year, now attracts an impressive group of racing names as well as cars.

This year, expect to see racing legends George Follmer, a Trans-Am and Can-Am champion, and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Roger Ward. Augie Pabst of Scarab fame will drive a 1960 Formula One Lotus 18, the more powerful version of Delane’s car. Bob Bondurant, an ex-Cobra team driver, will be in a restored 427-cubic-inch Cobra.

Follmer and Parnelli Jones, two of racing’s toughest competitors, will be in cars they raced in the Trans-Am series during the ‘60s. Jones will drive a ’69 Mustang and Follmer a ’67 version. Venerable British expatriate Brian Redman, who is a Can-Am and Formula 5000 champion, will drive a powerful 1971 Lola 212 Can-Am car.

For these racing greats, being asked to drive one of their original racing cars is as much a step down Memory Lane as it is just plain fun. Picture Roger Ward, Follmer and Jones in the cars that made them famous.

At more intense racing events, spectators are distanced from the action by walls, fences and a complex system of credentials. But at Palm Springs, fans should feel almost like participants because many of the grandstands--though in safe areas--are so located that ticket holders can feel the ground shake from the unmuffled roar of horsepower and smell the hot metal, oil and rubber.

Delane knows how compelling being close to the action can be.

“When my daughter Megan graduated from high school,” he says, “we offered her a choice of a trip to Hawaii, a college wardrobe or a course at the Jim Russell racing school at Riverside. She chose the Jim Russell school and we went together.

“It was great fun, and it also was the final step in my getting on the track in a vintage car. I borrowed my daughter’s MGB, had it prepared for competition and raced it for a season before I gave it back.”

Mike Sheehan is another person who will race an open-wheel car at Palm Springs next weekend. His approach to racing is different from that of Delane.

Sheehan’s car is a Formula One Tyrrell 007 built in 1974 that does not race on skinny tires. He found his car in Italy, where it was entered in vintage racing events by an Italian industrialist after Team Tyrrell retired it from international Formula One competition in 1976. Sheehan is a serious competitor who enters a Chevrolet Camaro in the International Motor Sports GTO class against some of the best sports car drivers in the United States.

“The reason I like vintage events,” he says, “is because this is the only place I can drive a car that at one time was the ultimate race car. In my opinion, there is nothing that rivals Formula One, and I’m too old and not good enough to even dream about racing a current Formula One car. After all, there are only about 40 people in the world who can. So I compete in an older Formula One car at vintage races.

“Of course, this kind of racing isn’t about winning, and I really don’t care if I do win, but I try as hard as I can.”

Sheehan, who owns European Auto Sales in Costa Mesa, expects that trying hard will get him to speeds as high as 150 m.p.h. at Palm Springs.

According to Sheehan and Delane, Palm Springs is the second most prestigious vintage event in the West and the No. 1 street race in which cars thread between unforgiving concrete walls.

“In a few years I think Palm Springs will be as big a deal as the historic races in Monterey,” says Sheehan. “Monterey still is No. 1 because it’s older, is a different kind of track and has more tradition. But the great appeal of Palm Springs is that it’s close to Los Angeles and has great hotels, restaurants and shopping, so it’s easy to bring your family along.

“And for people from the Midwest or the East, having it be warm is no bad thing. This weekend is as much social as it is about cars. I suppose from an automotive standpoint, you could think of it as Monterey with cactus.”

For their part, Palm Springs officials work to create a festive atmosphere of varied automotive events.

At 6 p.m. Thursday, promoter Rick Cole will begin a sports and racing car auction that is expected to attract prospective buyers and sellers from as far away as Europe and Japan. Cole’s auctions are as much theater as bazaar, and $12.50 buys a ticket to the show. The action is fast, loud and exciting, and it is not unusual to see millions of dollars change hands as 100 or so mostly stunning cars roll through the auction area.

Another traditional event, though not usually part of vintage racing weekends, is a two-day concours d’elegance. (A concours is a beauty competition for interesting and elegant automobiles.) Tickets are $12.50. Serious concours participation means showing up with a car that has passed from mere transportation to objet d’art and displaying it for spectators and judges in an often pastoral setting.

To approach a 100-point score, a car must be perfect, with each wire, stitch and color authentic and spotless. An unskilled eye shouldn’t find a speck of dirt, grime or grease anywhere. Concours events, like vintage races, have a class for just about every car, and it’s reasonable to expect anything from early Fords and Chevies to Bugattis, Duesenbergs, Cobras and Delahayes.

The best way to enjoy the Palm Springs vintage weekend is to think of it as an automotive smorgasbord and sample a little of everything.

Buy a program and read the race schedule, picking out the events that include your favorite cars. In addition to pure racing machines--the kind driven by John Delane, Mike Sheehan, Parnelli Jones and Roger Ward--there are dozens of production cars, GT cars, antiques, sports racers, sedans and specials. They race in groups, not necessarily with any logic except to the organizers, so each race is an eclectic mix of vehicles.

At a vintage racing event, understand that speed is OK, rough driving isn’t, and any driver who is overly aggressive goes to the sidelines for as long as a year.

Activities center on the temporary race circuit on Tahquitz Road near the airport. The Wyndham Resort Hotel is the social center for most participants, and if you want to hear car talk all you need to do is wander around its public areas.

Also, don’t overlook the parking lots, where you’ll see cars more interesting and exciting than at most American auto shows.

The “star-studded” show and dinner Saturday at the Palm Springs Convention Center costs $75 a ticket. Tickets for a four-day VIP grandstand seat and access to the paddock areas are $60. The Palm Springs version of a four-day coach seat costs $45, and $20 gets you in on any single day. Call (619) 322-7223 for additional information.