MOTOR RACING : Indy Cars Get Plenty of Company This Weekend at Long Beach

When the streets along Long Beach’s Shoreline Village and Marina Park are closed Friday morning for racing, it will be for more than just Indy cars.

The 16th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach will conclude Sunday afternoon with Indy cars racing 95 laps around the 11-turn, 1.67-mile street circuit, but the three-day celebration of speed and noise will also include races for the American Racing Series, the Chevron GTO-GTU cars of the International Motor Sports Assn., the Toyota Atlantic series and a pro-celebrity sprint involving entertainment and sports personalities.

Al Unser Jr. will seek his third consecutive victory in the Grand Prix against a field that includes Roger Penske’s new superteam of Rick Mears, Danny Sullivan and defending Indy car champion Emerson Fittipaldi, as well as the Andrettis, father Mario and son Michael.

In the six years that Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) has provided the feature attraction in Long Beach, only an Andretti or an Unser has won. Mario won in 1984, 1985 and 1987, Michael in 1986 and Little Al the past two years.

“It’s a two-family tradition that we expect to continue,” Mario said, “but it’s time for the Andrettis to get back on the rostrum.” Mario Andretti also won a Formula One race at Long Beach in 1977.

Before 1984, the race was for Formula One cars, except for the inaugural event in 1975 that was for Formula 5,000 cars.

Indy cars will take their first practice runs at 10 a.m. Friday, and much of the interest along pit row will center around the Penske-Chevy driven by Eddie Cheever and the Lola-Judd driven by Willy T. Ribbs.

Cheever, a 10-year veteran of Formula One, will make his street-racing debut in Indy cars, hoping to emulate the success of Fittipaldi, who retired from Formula One and later drove Indy cars. Fittipaldi won the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship in 1989, his sixth season. Ribbs, a former Trans-Am and IMSA driver from San Jose, will be the first black driver in an Indy car race.

Rajo Jack, a black driver from Los Angeles, drove what was called an Indy-type car in the 1940s at Southern Ascot Speedway in South Gate; and Johnnie Kay, another black Angeleno, drove similar cars in the early ‘30s at Legion Ascot and the old Culver City Raceway. But neither drove in a sanctioned Indy car race.

Stars of the future will be showcased in the American Racing Series and Atlantic races. The ARS is a series for prospective Indy car drivers in as-near-as-possible-to identical cars with Wildcat-March chassis and Buick V-6 racing engines. The Atlantic series is a minor league category for drivers of open-wheel, open-cockpit cars getting started in racing.

Two former ARS champions, Jon Beekhuis of Salinas and Didier Theys of Belgium, are entered in the Indy car race, as are two other former ARS drivers, Wally Dallenbach Jr. of Basalt, Colo., and Michael Greenfield of Manhasset, N.Y.

Among the ARS favorites are Paul Tracy of Canada and Mark Smith of McMinnville, Ore., who finished one-two in the season opener two weeks ago at Phoenix; Tommy Byrne of Ireland, last year’s Long Beach winner; P.J. Jones of Rolling Hills, son of Parnelli Jones, and an ARS winner at Mid-Ohio last year; and Robbie Groff of Northridge, all-time leading money-winner in the Bosch Super Vee series and younger brother of 1989 ARS champion Mike Groff.

The IMSA GTO-GTU race will be the first of its kind for Long Beach. While the GTO and GTU production cars of IMSA are racing here Saturday, the GTP prototypes will be at West Palm Beach, Fla., for a three-hour race Sunday.

Robby Gordon, the rookie GTO driver from Orange, will be closely watched in the one-hour sprint race. Gordon, with his only background in racing from stadium and desert off-road racing, won two of the first three races at Daytona and Sebring, in Florida, while driving with Calvin Fish and Lyn St. James. Gordon will drive solo Saturday in a turbocharged Cougar.

Gordon has a crowded schedule. He also is supposed to drive a Ford truck for Jim Venable in the San Felipe 250, a SCORE desert race Saturday in Baja California. The San Felipe race will start at 6 a.m., and Gordon hopes to finish in time to hop into Venable’s jet and arrive in Long Beach in time for the scheduled 4:15 p.m. start of the GTO-GTU race.

Pete Halsmer of Anaheim, who won the GTO championship last year in a Mercury, is driving a Mazda RX-7 on a two-car team with veteran Elliott Forbes-Robinson of Denver, N.C.

The Toyota pro-celebrity is also set for Saturday. The 10-lap dash will have 16 starters. Among them will be former Indianapolis 500 winners Bobby Rahal and Johnny Rutherford, motocross champion Bob Hannah, hydroplane champion Skip Hanauer, former football star Larry Csonka and entertainers Stephen Baldwin, Peter Cetera, Dwight Yoakam, Dustin Nguyen, Joe Gian and Tony O’Dell.

The racing weekend will conclude with the Toyota Atlantic race late Sunday, after the Indy car race.

SPRINT CARS & MIDGETS--California Racing Assn. sprint cars and U.S. Auto Club midgets will join forces for a $30,000 “Salute to the Long Beach Grand Prix” weekend at Ascot Park. Friday, the sprint cars will run time trials, survival heats and a 20-lap exhibition main event, with the CRA field trying to catch surprising John Redican, the 45-year-old veteran from Chatsworth who has won five races this season. No other driver has won more than once, and two-time defending champion Ron Shuman is without a victory. . . . Saturday will start with a full midget program as part of the ESPN Thunder Series, followed by the rest of the two-day sprint car schedule. Also part of the show will be a tribute to Jimmy Oskie, 45, CRA’s only five-time champion. Oskie racing memorabilia will be on display at the Torrance Historical Society Museum through Sunday, with Oskie holding autograph sessions there Saturday and Sunday from noon to 2 p.m. He won championships in 1969, 1974, 1976, 1977 and 1979 and will race in the weekend program at Ascot.

STOCK CARS--Points races in NASCAR’s $600,000 Winston Racing Series will start Saturday night at Saugus, Orange Show and Cajon Speedways, and Sunday night at Ascot Park. Ascot is part of the Pacific Coast Region, which consists of tracks in Oregon, Nevada, Washington and Northern California. The other three are part of the Sunbelt Region and are lumped with tracks in Texas, Alabama, Arizona and Florida. . . . Street stocks will race Friday night at Ventura Raceway.

MOTORCYCLES--Speedway racing will return to Santa Barbara Sunday at the Earl Warren Showgrounds. Racing will start at 5:30 p.m., featuring national champion and hometown favorite Bobby Schwartz and Mike Faria, winner of the season opener last month. Both will also be at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa Friday night. . . . The third round of the world observed trials will be held Sunday at Globe, Ariz.

SPORTS CARS--The USAC’s new Formula 2,000 series for winged, rear-engine machines will make its debut this weekend at Willow Springs Raceway. Robby Flock, Western States midget champion, will be one of the favorites, along with Les Phillips, Southern California Formula Ford and F2,000 champion.

DRAG BOATS--The International Hot Boat Assn. returns to Puddingstone Reservoir this weekend for the Chief Auto Parts Springnationals. Sixteen classes of boats, including the 220-m.p.h. top fuel hydros, will compete. The reservoir is in Frank Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas.

RALLY--Rod Millen, winner of the Asian-Pacific series last year, will drive his Mazda in the Rim of the World Rally in the mountains west of Lancaster April 28-29.

SUPER MODIFIEDS--Santa Maria Speedway will open its 1990 season Saturday night with the big California dirt cars in the Bud Stanfield Memorial race.