MOTOR RACING : Feuding Picks Up Where It Left Off as Season Opens

The most contentious and controversial Formula One season in history ended four months ago in the rain in Australia, and indications are the 1990 Grand Prix season may open with the same rancorous atmosphere Sunday in the sunshine at Phoenix.

The rivalry between Alain Prost, the world champion from France, and Ayrton Senna, his chief challenger and former teammate from Brazil, is so bitter that a mutual sponsor, Marlboro, has scheduled separate news conferences for them today. Normally, when drivers race for the same sponsor, they appear together as one big, happy family.

Both drove for McLaren-Honda last year, a circumstance that did little to alleviate their hard feelings toward one another. This year, Prost has taken his talents to Ferrari in hopes of bringing the Italian factory its first world championship since South Africa’s Jody Scheckter won in 1979.

Prost, 35, won his third world championship last October in Japan while sitting on the sideline--the result of Senna’s having crashed into him--as Senna apparently won the race. After the crash, seven laps from the checkered flag, Prost was unable to continue, but Senna managed to get his car going and returned to the course. In so doing, however, he cut across a curve, causing him to be disqualified for taking a shortcut. The decision, which the McLaren team threatened to take to court, gave the race to Alessandro Nannini in a Benneton Ford and the championship to Prost.

Senna, 29, the 1988 champion, accused Jean-Marie Balestre of France, president of the International Motor Sports Federation (FISA), of “manipulating” the championship for his countryman.

“Balestre, out of patriotism, friendship or for other reasons I prefer not to mention, wanted to see Prost as champion,” Senna said.

Balestre responded by suspending Senna for six months, fining him $100,000 and threatening to bar him for the entire 1990 season if he did not apologize.

“The possibility exists of (my) abandoning Formula One, and I am still debating with myself whether or not I have the motivation to continue racing (in Formula One),” Senna said at the time.

McLaren paid the $100,000 fine, and the six-month ban was suspended, but when Senna refused to apologize, Balestre set a deadline of Feb. 15 for him to apply for a license. As the date approached and no apology was heard from Senna, there were rumors that he would make his 1990 debut in Phoenix, all right--but in an Indy car on April 8, instead of in a Formula One car on March 11.

At the last minute, the Brazilian issued an apology of sorts, which apparently appeased Balestre enough that he granted him a license.

Prost, on the other hand, said the bitterness of his long struggle with Senna prevented him from enjoying the championship and that he was eager to leave McLaren for Ferrari.

“He (Senna) is a computer, he sees only the success,” Prost was quoted as saying in the East German newspaper, Deutsches Sportecho. “He is risking his life just to win and to become world champion. I find this price is too high.”

When the Grand Prix season ended one race later, at Adelaide, Australia, Prost refused to drive in the rain and sat in the pits while the race was run--a sad footnote to a championship season.

“I want to win the drivers’ title again this year, but my main motivation is to see Ferrari beat McLaren to win the team title,” Prost told Reuters before leaving London for Phoenix. “The No. 1 consideration is Ferrari, even if it means Nigel (Mansell) winning instead of me.”

Mansell, an Englishman who drove last year for Ferrari and had his own share of controversy, will be Prost’s teammate.

Mansell was disqualified in the Portuguese Grand Prix for driving in reverse in the pits and then failing to respond to a black flag calling him in. He was fined $50,000 and suspended from the Spanish Grand Prix the following week.

The circumstance took on added significance when Mansell, still racing despite being disqualified, collided with Senna and the championship contender was knocked out of the race. Mansell claimed he had to go in reverse after overshooting his pits because McLaren mechanics and tires blocked his view of where to stop, a claim that McLaren team manager Ron Dennis vehemently denied.

Austria’s Gerhard Berger, who won the Portuguese race for Ferrari after Senna was sidelined, has replaced Prost on the McLaren-Honda team this year in what appears to be a straight driver trade between the two leading teams.

When the season opens Sunday with the Iceberg USA Grand Prix in the streets of downtown Phoenix, it will be only the second time since 1957, the year before Phil Hill and Carroll Shelby left Southern California to drive a pair of Maseratis in the French Grand Prix, that there will be no American drivers.

When Eddie Cheever, a native Arizonan who lived most his life overseas, dropped out this year to drive an Indy car, it left Formula One exclusively the province of drivers from Europe, South America, Australia and Japan.

Cheever, who plugged along, competing in 132 races for eight different teams without a win through the last decade, was the lone driver wearing Stars and Stripes most of that time. Danny Sullivan drove the 1983 season with Tyrrell, and Mario Andretti, who won the championship in 1978 in a Lotus Ford, also drove in 1981 before dropping off the international circuit.

Cheever missed the 1986 season, which he took off, but returned to drive three more years for the Arrows team. This year, he will drive a Penske-Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi on the Indy car circuit.

Surprisingly, despite the lack of interest from American teams or drivers, there have been more Formula One races in the United States than in any other country, although their sites have moved around from Indianapolis to Sebring, Fla., to Riverside, to Watkins Glen, N.Y., to Long Beach, to Las Vegas, to Detroit, to Dallas and now to Phoenix. That’s right, the Indianapolis 500 was part of the Formula One season from 1950 through 1960, and those 11 races give the U.S. a total of 52, to 42 for Great Britain and 40 for Italy.

The Phoenix race will be the only time a U.S. Grand Prix has opened the season, except for 1981 in Long Beach. Last year, the inaugural Phoenix race was held in June in 100-degree weather.

POWERBOATS--Jim Duvall of Long Beach, in Crimson Tide, will defend his championship Saturday in the Long Beach Rum Run offshore race against a field that includes former winner Bob Nordskog, in Powerboat Magazine Special; Karl Koster, in Kal Kustom, and David Perry, in Waterheater. More than 30 boats are entered in the race, which will start from Long Beach Harbor and finish in front of the Queen Mary.

Larger boats, 30 feet and up, will circle Catalina Island. Smaller boats will run to Avalon and return. The Rum Run is the opener of a seven-race Pacific Offshore Power Boat Racing Assn. season. Best viewing areas for the 10 a.m. start are Bluff Park, along Ocean Blvd. in Long Beach, and Pier J, to the south of the Queen Mary.

SPEEDWAY CYCLES--The third round of the four-event Spring Classic series will be held Friday night at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. British League veteran Kelly Moran and national champion Bobby Schwartz swapped wins in the first two events. Moran won at Long Beach and Schwartz at San Bernardino.

Teen-ager Billy Hamill, who will leave Saturday for England to ride in the British League, dislocated his knee in the Long Beach race and missed the San Bernardino race, but hopes to be ready Friday night in Costa Mesa. Before he crashed in the main event, Hamill won four of five heats. The series will end March 17 at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara.

SPRINT CARS--Wingless cars of the California Racing Assn. will compete Saturday night at Kings Speedway in Hanford. Billy Vukovich III is expected to drive against the CRA regulars, headed by two-time defending champion Ron Shuman and fellow Arizonan Lealand McSpadden, who won last Saturday night in Phoenix.

DRAG RACING--The Nostalgia Drag Racing Assn. will hold its second annual March Meet this weekend at Bakersfield Raceway, featuring a grudge match Sunday between K.S. Pittman and the Stone-Woods-Cook car that raced against one another in the early 1960s. . . . Top Gas West dragsters will race Sunday at the Los Angeles County Raceway in Palmdale.

MOTOCROSS--The Continental Motosports Club will hold its Western States championship Saturday and Sunday at Las Vegas International Raceway.