MOTOR RACING : Redican Isn’t Just Older, He’s Better Since Teaming With Simpson

At 45, an age when most race car drivers are thinking about hanging up their helmet and gloves, John Redican is experiencing a sprint car renaissance.

Redican won the opening California Racing Assn. main event last month in Bakersfield and, going into Saturday night’s opener at Ascot Park, leads the CRA standings with 379 points to 351 for Jerry Meyer of Chino, last year’s runner-up.

Defending champion Ron Shuman, without a victory after three races (two others were rained out), is fifth.

Redican, who lives in Chatsworth with girlfriend/car owner Kathy Simpson, has been racing since 1968 but sees this year as his first serious challenge for a season championship.

“With the start we got, and the support we’re getting from our sponsors, this could turn out to be a fantastic year,” Redican said. “It would be even more fantastic if we could win the final season at Ascot.” Ascot is scheduled to close in November after 33 years.

“It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, we were going to chuck it in and I was going to take a ride with someone else. The costs had escalated so fast that we couldn’t sustain our car any longer.”

A phone call from Sherman Pickerell of Pick’s Racing Engines in Irvine brought Redican and Simpson out of their contemplated retirement.

“Pick called and said he’d provide us with engines if we kept racing, and he wanted to do it anonymously,” Redican said. “You don’t find many sponsors like that. We were overwhelmed. Then Rose Noutary came along and said she wanted to help by getting us a chassis, so now she and Kathy are sort of co-owners and things couldn’t be working out better.

“I go to the track now believing that I can win. It wasn’t always that way.”

Redican has been a racing junkie since he was 4 and his father, Skee, took him to Ascot Park and other tracks where he raced midgets and sprint cars.

“I used to drive my mother nuts telling her I was going to drive a race car as soon as I was old enough,” he said. “She’d had enough of racing with my dad and didn’t really want me in it.”

Redican drove his first sprint car at the defunct Speedway 605 in Irwindale in 1968, but outside of a victory in the Salute to Indy 100 at Ascot in 1977, he had little success until he met Kathy Simpson in 1980.

Simpson came from a racing family and was a race enthusiast from the time she was a teen-ager. Although she drove stock cars, her dream had always been to own a sprint car, and she bought her first one in 1979. A year later, after obtaining a new Stanton chassis, she hired Redican to be her driver.

Redican gives her credit for boosting his confidence and turning him into a winning driver.

“Kathy came to me one night and said, ‘You’re lazy, you’re not getting near as much out of the car as you should,’ ” he recalled. “She told me that she didn’t want a driver who wasn’t trying as hard as he could, that she didn’t want someone who was content to cruise along in fourth or fifth place and be happy. Which, she said, was the way I was driving.

“Well, you can imagine how furious it made me. This was long before we started dating and it was a female car owner telling me I’d better shape up or move on. Of course, it turned out she was right, but it’s hard to hear something like that when you’re 36 or 37 and been racing all your life.”

Redican has 13 victories in CRA, 10 of them in the last three seasons. He won four races in 1987, one in 1988--when he fractured a knee in a hard crash at Ascot and missed part of the season--four last year and one this year. He finished third and fourth in this year’s other two races.

Car reliability has been the key to Redican’s recent success. Last year he started all 53 CRA races, a feat matched only by Jerry Meyer.

“We only broke three times in 53 races, and we’ve only had two engine failures in 130 races in the last three years,” he said. “That’s a real testimony to the kind of engines (Chevy Donovans) we get from Pick.”

Redican, director of parts and service at Dixon Cadillac in Hollywood, does all the chassis work himself along with three volunteers--Danny Grunkemyer, Jim Hudkins and Craig Stowell.

Redican will face a stiff challenge Saturday night in the 30-lap main event. Three Arizonans--Shuman, Lealand McSpadden and Billy Boat--will race, along with local favorites such as Meyer, Rip Williams, Mike Sweeney and two-time champion Brad Noffsinger.

“It’s funny racing against Noffsinger,” Redican said. “My first ride in a midget was for his dad, Ace Noffsinger. Brad was about 12 at the time and I raced midgets for Ace until Brad got older and took the ride and I went back to sprinters.”

Like most race drivers, Redican once thought of racing Indy cars or NASCAR stock cars, but now he is content to stick with Kathy and his sprint car.

“At my age, it’s more practical to be the big fish in the little pond than the other way around,” he said.

SPEEDWAY BIKES--National champion Bobby Schwartz will carry a big lead into the final round of the Coors Spring Classic series Saturday night at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara. Schwartz, who won last week in Costa Mesa, has 66 points to 60 for Kelly Moran, who won the opener at Long Beach two weeks ago. . . . The weekly seasons will start March 30 at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, April 8 at Speedway USA in Victorville, May 3 at Ascot Park and May 16 at Glen Helen Park in San Bernardino.

MOTOCROSS--Multi-national champion Rick Johnson will miss Saturday’s Supercross at Las Vegas and next week at the Rose Bowl after breaking a finger in a fall last week at Daytona. Johnson, who missed most of the 1989 season, won the opening motos of the national 250cc outdoor series at Gainesville, Fla., and hopes to return to racing for the second round April 1 at Hangtown. . . . The CMC Amateur Nationals will be held this weekend at Glen Helen Park in San Bernardino.

SPORTS CARS--The Jaguars and the Nissans will go at it again Saturday in the 12 Hours of Sebring in Florida. Davy Jones, Jan Lammers and Andy Wallace drove their Jaguar XJR-12 to victory in the 24 Hours of Daytona, and Geoff Brabham, Bob Earl and Chip Robinson drove a Nissan GTP Turbo to victory at Miami. Brabham and Robinson are also defending champions in Sebring, where their victory last year was the first for a Japanese manufacturer in a major endurance race.

Earl’s share at Miami made him only the second driver to win in four major International Motor Sports Assn. categories (GTU, GTO, GTP and Camel Lights). Elliott Forbes-Robinson completed the sweep three years ago.

DRAG RACING--The West Coast Super Comp Assn. will hold its second points race Saturday night at Bakersfield Raceway, 20 miles north of Bakersfield.

MOTORCYCLES--Formula One Grand Prix bikes will race this weekend at Willow Springs Raceway with the American Road Racing Assn. holding a series of spring events.