MOTOR RACING : Injured Gwynn Determined to Race Again

Drag racer Darrell Gwynn, speaking publicly for the first time since his near-fatal accident Easter Sunday in England, said he hopes to return to racing despite having part of his left arm amputated.

“I think all my parts are going to be moving in another month, so hopefully, I’ll be back in tip-top shape,” Gwynn told Dave McClelland of the National Hot Rod Assn. in a conversation taped for distribution. “Generally speaking, I feel pretty good. If I leave here and I’m walking, I’ll be real happy.

“Everything’s here, except my left hand. I think I can drive without that.”

Doctors at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, in Aylsbury, England, where Gwynn was taken after his top fuel dragster crashed during a practice run, have not determined if Gwynn will be paralyzed. He has no feeling below the waist, but doctors said that the swelling around his spinal cord, which was bruised and crushed, must be reduced before they can make a diagnosis.

“I’ve been conscious since the time I got off the plane here in England,” he said. “I’ve been awake the entire time and lived a whole lot, been through a lot of things that I didn’t think would ever come my way.”

Gwynn, 28, a three-time winner of the Winston World Finals at Pomona and one of the sport’s leading drivers, was testing his dragster before an exhibition race against Al Segrini, a fellow American, on the Santa Pod track in Bradsbury when it suddenly veered into the guard rail and rolled over on its side, pinning Gwynn beneath it as it slid down the strip.

“I recollect everything that’s happened and for some reason the car just wanted to go and I had no control over it. I asked my dad, ‘Hey, is it something I did?’ and (he said) it looks like mechanical failure at this time.”

Jerry Gwynn has been his son’s crew chief and team manager since Darrell began racing in 1980 in their hometown of Miami.

The premier motorcycle road racers in the United States will be at Willow Springs Raceway this weekend for the Western Eastern Roadracers Assn. Formula USA championship race and the Kerker/Scandinavian Brake Systems national endurance race.

Dave Sadowski, winner of the Daytona 200 last March on a Yamaha 750, heads the entry list for the WERA Formula USA race on Sunday, which will be 20 laps around Willow Springs’ 2.5-mile road course. Formula USA bikes are unlimited in engine displacement and modifications, usually four-cylinder variations of Japanese sportbikes such as the Yamaha FZR, Honda Hurricane, Kawasaki Ninja or Suzuki GSXR.

Sadowski, 26, from Buford, Ga., will ride a Yamaha for the Vance & Hines team of Santa Fe Springs. In addition to winning the Daytona 500, the most prestigious race on the American Motorcyclist Assn. schedule, he won the 1986 WERA national endurance championship.

Formula USA was started in 1986 at Willow Springs by track promoter Bill Huth and taken national last year by WERA. The bikes are capable of speeds up to 170 m.p.h.

Also on Sunday will be three 12-lap races for Superstock bikes.

Saturday, 60 teams will compete in the six-hour national championship endurance race, which will start at 11:30 a.m. It will be Round 3 of the 15-race series.

Each rider will race between 60 to 90 minutes before stopping for fuel, tires and a rider change--which will all be accomplished in less than a minute.

Team Suzuki’s Mike Smith of Atlanta and Kurt Hall of Bluffton, S.C., who won a six-hour race last month at Talladega, Ala., will be favored in the enduro on their Suzuki 1100. Their Talladega victory was the team’s 50th since it was organized as Team Hammer in 1981 with Bruce Hammer and John Ulrich, two Southern Californians, as the riders.

Among the other entries will be Team Marlboro Roberts, managed by former world champion Kenny Roberts, who also manages world champion Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey on the world championship Grand Prix circuit. Roberts’ team will include Rich Oliver of Pittsburg, Calif., winner of the 250cc race at Daytona this year.

Willow Springs Raceway is located off Route 14 in Rosamond, just north of Lancaster, about 90 miles from downtown Los Angeles.

MIDGETS--Sleepy Tripp, defending champion in the United States Auto Club’s ESPN Thunder Series, will attempt to make up more ground on points leader Robby Flock when the series resumes Saturday night at Ascot Park. Tripp, who won his 201st career race last week, trails Flock, the USAC Western Regional champion, by 16 points with two races remaining. Three-quarter midgets will share the billing with the full midgets.

DRAG RACING--The National Hot Rod Assn. will open its Division 7 season this weekend at Bakersfield Raceway for eight sportsman categories. It is the first of six events leading to the Winston divisional point championships. A purse of $95,200 will be at stake with final eliminations Sunday.

Three-time world drag boat champion Tim Capaldi of Canoga Park will make his car racing debut at Bakersfield in a top alcohol dragster after racing on water nine years. The car was built by his boat crew, headed by his father, Ray, also a former world drag boat champion. Capaldi decided to switch from water to asphalt after a crash in his “Shot in the Dark” blown alcohol hydro last April at Puddingstone Lake that sidelined him for five weeks.

STOCK CARS--Ron Meyer has won the Winston Racing Series championship three of the past four years at Ascot Park, but this year he is concentrating on pavement racing so his older brother, Bill Jr., has taken over the family position in the pro stock class. Bill Jr. won his second outing last week and will be back for more against perennial challenger Marcus Mallett in Sunday night’s main event.

NASCAR sportsman, street stocks and a destruction derby are scheduled Saturday night at Saugus Speedway and Cajon Speedway. . . . Orange Show Speedway will be dark for another week as the Orange Show takes over the San Bernardino facility. . . . Street stocks race Friday night at Ventura Raceway.

RALLY--Rod Millen, a transplanted New Zealander living in Irvine who won the National Pro Rally driver championship last year, will drive a Mazda in the annual Rim of the World Rally on Saturday. The event, part of the North American Rally championship series, will start at 1 p.m. in Lancaster and run for 14 hours in a series of stages in the Angeles National Forest northeast of Antelope Valley.

Millen is not contesting the national series this year but is making an appearance this weekend to prepare for defense of his Asian-Pacific rally championship.

MOTOCROSS--The Continental Motosports Club’s Spring Classic series will be at Carlsbad Raceway on Sunday. The CMC will also hold a night program Friday at Ascot Park. . . . The third race in the Coors/Kawasaki series at Ventura Raceway is scheduled Saturday night.

SPRINT CARS--A record 47 cars have been entered in the sixth annual California Racing Assn.’s Midwest Tour, which will start Tuesday at 81 Speedway in Wichita, Kan. After nine races in Kansas, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa, the CRA will return to its home base at Ascot Park on May 19.

Santa Maria Speedway will hold a Golden State Challenge race Saturday night.

NECROLOGY--Bob Drake, of Marina del Rey, a leading Sports Car Club of America driver in the ‘60s, died of cancer last Wednesday at the Motion Picture Hospital in Chatsworth, where he had been ill for six months. Drake, 70, won major sports car races at Palm Springs, Pomona, Santa Barbara and Willow Springs while driving a Ferrari for John von Neumann and Birdcage Maseratis for Joe Lubin and Max Balchowsky. He is survived by his wife, Gloria, of Marina del Rey; son James of Arroyo Grande, and granddaughter Laura. Burial was at sea.