Ribbs is Driven to Reach Goal of Competing in an Indy 500 : Auto Racing: Black driver will take first step when he drives in Long Beach race. He also will be making history.

Willy T. Ribbs is not going to the Indianapolis 500 this year--except perhaps as a spectator--but he says that it’s only a matter of time, and getting the right equipment.

The way Ribbs looks at it, when he takes the green flag on Sunday in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, the Indy car race through the streets of that seaside community, it will have the same significance for blacks in auto racing that Jackie Robinson had for baseball players when he made his first major league appearance on April 15, 1947.

“Auto racing history will be made in Long Beach,” Ribbs said. “I don’t know where Jackie Robinson made his debut (Ebbets Field in Brooklyn), but I’ll be making mine in Long Beach. I will finally be making it to the big leagues. I think I’ve earned it.

“I’m fully aware of the implications of being the first black in Indy cars, but that’s not what it’s all about. I’m going in with the same attitude Jackie Robinson had, and that’s to be a winner. It doesn’t matter if I’m black, white or purple, the object is to win.”

Ribbs, 34, will drive a year-old, Judd-powered Lola, No. 25, for the Raynor-Cosby Racing Team in Long Beach. The only other serious black Indy-car candidate since the sport evolved in 1909 was Benny Scott of Long Beach, who had hoped to use the L&M; Continental series as a springboard to Indy in 1973 but never made it after his under-financed team quit.

“Indy will come later, when we get the kind of a car we need to be competitive,” Ribbs said. “The team only has an ’89 chassis and on an oval, with the new rules, it doesn’t cut it against the new ’90 models. On a road course, or a street course like Long Beach, the difference is not as pronounced.”

The highest finishing year-old Lola in Sunday’s Indy car opener at Phoenix was 10th. It was driven by rookie Scott Goodyear of Canada. The first six finishers were 1990 cars, all powered by Chevrolet engines.

Ribbs tested nearly for 1,000 miles on the one-mile oval at Phoenix before he and team manager Kim Green decided to skip oval races this season and concentrate on the 11 road races on the Championship Auto Racing Teams schedule.

“The longer we ran, the more we found we couldn’t be ready in our older car,” Ribbs said. “When Bill Cosby and the Raynor team made the announcement last November that we were going to Indy, we all felt that we would have a 1990 Lola to work with, but it didn’t work out that way.”

With Cosby, TV’s highest-rated personality, coming aboard as a part-owner, it was assumed that sponsors would scramble to sign up with the Raynor team. Especially when word leaked out that Cosby would throw in a commercial--rumored to be worth in the neighborhood of $1 million--for the sponsor-to-be.

So far, though, no sponsor has been found, and the lack of one has caused Raynor to postpone its order of a new chassis, which costs about $300,000.

“We did expect the Cosby name to be magic,” Green said. “But we got started too late in the year for major corporations to juggle their budgets to accommodate us. To properly plan for the future, we need a multi-year program, and that means 1991 and beyond.

“At the present moment, we’re a good team, but we’re small and we can’t do the development work the richer teams can. The difference in first place and 10th place today might only be less than a second, but measured in money, it can be in the millions.”

Preparing for a tight, street course such as Long Beach’s 1.67-mile, 11-turn seaside circuit is difficult because the track will not be open until shortly before practice early Friday morning. Ribbs did his preparation at West Palm Beach, Fla., on a fairgrounds track where the International Motor Sports Assn. holds sports car races.

“We put in three days at West Palm and came away quite satisfied with our progress,” Ribbs said. “The most important thing in preparing for a street race is compromising the car, getting it so it will respond quickly--without sliding up against a wall--and turn equally well in both directions.”

Ribbs has done his homework on road courses for 14 years since he earned a racing license at the Jim Russell school at Willow Springs Raceway. He has raced and won in Formula Ford, Formula Atlantic, Trans-AM, IMSA GTO and IMSA prototypes, but at Long Beach he will be racing a 750-horsepower Indy car for the first time. Already, he is impressed with the difference.

But Ribbs, remembering a practice at Phoenix last month, is still learning to handle the car.

“We were testing a softer spring combination and we went too soft and the car bottomed out on the pavement,” he said. “That sent it into a spin in the middle of the second turn. It hit on the left side and it wouldn’t have been so bad, but it put a hole in the tub.

“It wasn’t the first time (to hit a wall), and it won’t be the last.”

This is actually the second time that Ribbs, a flamboyant second-generation driver from San Jose--his father, Bunny, was active in Sports Car Club of America races on the West Coast--has been at the center of an Indy-car campaign.

In 1985, heavily sponsored by Miller beer and promoted by boxing’s Don King, Ribbs went to Indianapolis with a car owned by Sherman Armstrong. With no prior practice, Ribbs was thrown into the rookie orientation program and, after about 50 laps and a top speed of 172.215 m.p.h., he climbed out of the car and announced that he would not continue.

“The car was no good, but that was only part of it,” Ribbs said. “The car wasn’t as bad as the people involved with it. The whole thing was a disaster from the word go. It was one of the smarter decisions I’ve made to walk away from the whole deal.”

Ribbs heard the not-so-veiled criticism from the old-timers at the Speedway, who said that the concrete walls and the speed had thrown fear into the young black man’s heart.

“Let them say what they want, it was just a question of making a professional decision,” Ribbs said. “I’ve never let my emotions control a decision in my racing career. If I’d been all emotional about getting to Indy, I’d have stayed around and struggled, but that was not the way to handle it.

“Arie Luyendyk had driven the car for Provimi Veal and didn’t like it, so they sold it to Armstrong. Jim Trueman, who helped me more than anyone else when I was getting started, warned me that it was a Mickey Mouse deal but I thought with Don King aboard, it would turn into something. I was wrong.

“After I walked away from it, Armstrong closed his garage and left. He knew no one could make it run.”

This year’s decision to skip Indy bears no relation to the earlier disappointment, Ribbs said.

“If we had a new 1990 car, like most of our competitors have, we would have been at Phoenix and we would be going to Indianapolis. But we don’t, so we want to do the best with what we have and that means concentrating on road-course races.

“The Raynor team, Kim Green, the team manager, and the entire crew, all the engineers, everyone, have been great to work with. I think the future with them is great.”

Green, an Australian who came to the United States in 1981 to work with his brother Barry on the Paul Newman Can-Am team, has been Raynor’s chief mechanic since November, 1987, and recently was promoted to team manager. Barry holds the same role with Bobby Rahal’s car on the Galles-Kraco team.

“In a lot of street- and road-track situations, we feel that Willy can make up the difference between the old and the new car,” Green said. “We all know that the ones with the Chevy engines have a decided advantage on any circuit. Realistically, our goal at Long Beach is to be right there at the tail end of the Chevies, but at the front end of the Judds and Cosworths.”

Ribbs has driven three times in Formula Atlantic races in Long Beach, but never on the course being used for Indy cars. When he drove, the course included a stretch along Ocean Boulevard, up the hill from the current track, which is all down on the flat area next to the marina.

“I enjoy street races, but more important, having Long Beach as the site for my first race is something special to me,” Ribbs said. “It is the granddaddy of all Grand Prix street races in America and with all that tradition, it has a tremendous attraction about it.”

Ribbs became the team driver for Raynor, a garage door company in Dixon, Ill., after the owners, Ray Neisewander Jr. and his son, Ray III, decided they needed an American driver to market if they expected to attract major sponsorship from other corporations. Derek Daly, an Irishman who is driving for the Nissan GTP team in IMSA, had driven for Raynor for three years and had 11 finishes in the top 10 in 43 starts.

“Derek helped us become a contending team, but we felt we it was important to have an American in the car,” Green said. “We were definitely against getting a ‘buy ride,’ a driver who got the ride because he brought a lot of money.

“We wanted a young driver, someone with a lot of potential. We tested John Andretti, Mario’s nephew, and Robby Unser, Bobby’s son, at Memphis and were impressed by both of them.

“Willy T. heard we were looking for a driver and he approached us, mentioning that Bill Cosby was interested in becoming involved. We took Willy to Memphis and put him through the same test as the others. All three were very good, but after a lot of discussion we felt that a better program could be built around Willy.

“Things haven’t completely fallen into place yet, but they certainly will, and when they do we expect to have a front-running team.”

Cosby got interested in Ribbs when he was watching TV one day in the summer of 1988 and saw this exuberant black driver dancing on the roof of his Trans-Am car at Sears Point Raceway.

“A couple of years ago, after I’d won a race at Brainerd (Minn.) when I finished on a flat tire, I got so carried away that I jumped up on the top of the car and did a little Sugar Ray Leonard shuffle,” Ribbs said. “I got so much attention from it that I did it every time I won a race. I was just lucky that Bill (Cosby) caught my act from Sears Point.

“He called me the next day and said he’d watched me and asked me about my career. We got to be good friends and the next thing you know he was helping put together the Indy-car team with Raynor.

“Six months ago, he hardly knew a thing about racing, but he keeps in touch every day and now, when we talk, I’m amazed at how much the man knows about chassis set-up and engines, everything about the car.”

FACTS AND FIGURES THE COURSE On the streets surrounding Shoreline Village and the Downtown Marina in Long Beach. Start-finish line is on Shoreline Drive. The course of 1.67 miles circles the Convention Center and Sports Arena and passes through the underground parking garage of the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

THE SCHEDULE FRIDAY: 8:30 a.m.-9 a.m.--American Racing Series practice. 9:15-9:45--Chevron GTO-GTU practice. 10-11:30--CART Indy car practice. 11:45-12:15--Toyota pro-celebrity practice. 12:30-1 p.m.--ARS qualifying. 1:15-1:45--Sisapa-Toyota Atlantic practice. 2-3:15--CART Indy car qualifying. 3:30-4--Toyota pro-celebrity qualifying. 4:15-5:15--Chevron GTO-GTU qualifying.

SATURDAY: 8:15-8:45--Final Chevron GTO-GTU qualifying. 9-10--CART Indy car practice. 10:15-10:45--Sisapa-Toyota Atlantic practice. 11:30-12:45--CART Indy car qualifying. 1-1:45--Toyota pro-celebrity race (10 laps). 1:50-2:20--Final ARS qualifying. 2:30-3--Final Sisapa-Toyota Atlantic qualifying. 3:30-4--Final CART Indy car practice. 4:15-5:30--Chevron GTO-GTU Challenge race (one hour).

SUNDAY: 9:45-10:45--ARS race (37 laps). 11-11:30--Toyota One Lap of America finish. 1-3--Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach for CART Indy cars (95 laps). 3:30-4:30--Sisapa Toyota Atlantic race (37 laps).

THE COMPETITION CART INDY CARS--Open-wheeled, open-cockpit, single-seat race cars weighing a minimum of 1,550 pounds. Chassis: Penske, Lola, March. Engines: Chevy Indy V-8, Porsche AG, Buick, Cosworth, Judd, Alfa Romeo, which generate approximately 750 horsepower.

AMERICAN RACING SERIES--Open-wheeled Wildcat-March chassis powered by Buick V-6 engines, which generate approximately 410 horsepower.

CHEVRON GTO-GTU CHALLENGE--GTO (Grand Touring Over) are cars with more than three liters in engine displacement. GTU (Grand Touring Under) have less than three liters’ engine displacement. Cars are four-rotor Mazda RX-7s, four-cylinder turbo Cougars, Ferrari F-40LM, big V-8 Camaros, Corvettes, Capris and twin-turbo Nissan Zs.

TOYOTA ATLANTIC--Open-wheeled, single-seat cars powered by 1600cc Toyota 1.6-liter, 16-valve, twin-cam engines with 225 horsepower.

ONE LAP OF AMERICA--Cars that started from Long Beach Saturday will return to start-finish line after completing 8,000 miles in eight days that included a stop in New York City.