MOTOR RACING : Shuman Speeds Toward a Place in Ascot Lore

Winning races is one thing and making money is another, but the main motivator for Ron Shuman during the remainder of the racing season may be securing a permanent place in the Ascot Park history books before the venerable dirt track closes in November.

Shuman, from Tempe, Ariz., is already a legend at Ascot, having won six of the late J.C. Agajanian’s Turkey Night Grand Prix midget races, three Pacific Coast Championships and the last two California Racing Assn. sprint car championships.

All that’s left are the 50th and final Turkey Night midget race on Nov. 22 and the conclusion of the final CRA season at Ascot. The CRA will continue next year at an assortment of tracks, but Ascot has been its home base for many seasons.

“Wouldn’t it be something to win the CRA again and then take the midget race?” Shuman said the other night at Ascot. “It’s sort of a longshot, but we’ll be giving it our best.”

The way Shuman, 37, has been driving lately, the odds are shortening.

He has won the past four open-wheel main events at Ascot: three CRA sprint car races and one United States Auto Club midget main event.

This weekend he will attempt to stretch his streak to six when Ascot holds a CRA 30-lap main event Saturday night and a USAC Western States regional midget race Sunday night.

“It’s going to be tough catching Brad (Noffsinger) as long as he runs up front (in sprint cars), but the way Andy Morales has the car hooked up, we’ll have a shot at it,” Shuman said. Shuman, in Morales’ No. 1 Gambler, has led a record 101 consecutive main event laps at Ascot dating to Aug. 25.

Last Saturday night’s victory was Shuman’s 54th in CRA racing and a record 145th for the car owner, Alex Morales, Inc.

Noffsinger, a two-time CRA champion who left the series for several seasons to pursue a career in NASCAR Winston Cup stock cars, leads Shuman, 3,215 points to 3,196 with 14 races remaining, including eight at Ascot. John Redican, with 3,175, and Rip Williams, with 3,155, also are still in the hunt.

Shuman was in seventh place, 237 points behind, after the CRA’s tour of the Midwest in May, so today’s 19-point deficit is not too difficult to overcome. The late-season surge is reminiscent of last year, when Shuman was injured in an early-season race at Chico that led to his falling 240 points behind before he caught and passed Jerry Meyer.

“Running the midgets is fun, and it’s good for me to keep my hand in before Turkey Night,” Shuman said. “I get a real kick out of running them.” Shuman won the Turkey night race in 1979, ‘80, ‘81, ‘82, ’84 and ‘87--and in 1986, he led until the final turn when a flat tire enabled Warren Mockler to pass him. No one else has won the race more than twice.

“I’ve won a lot of important races in my career, but I can’t imagine anything better than winning the last championship and the last race at Ascot,” Shuman said.

Some of Shuman’s other victories since he began racing modifieds around Phoenix in 1972 include four Western States Championships at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix, the 1979 Knoxville Nationals in sprint cars, two classic USAC races in Terre Haute, Ind., the 1985 Tony Hulman Sprint Car Classic and the 1982 Hut Hundred midget race.

“Every win is memorable, but I think I got the most personal satisfaction from winning the Peabody Classic (sprint car race) at Ascot in both 1988 and ‘89,” he said. “I’d been trying to win the Peabody for a long time, and I was getting frustrated fretting about it. I needed to win the first one in ’88 to clinch the CRA championship, so that made it extra special.”

Shuman, who had lost the 1987 Peabody to Noffsinger on the final lap, won it the next year to edge Mike Sweeney for the title.

The USAC midget regulars, headed by former national champion Sleepy Tripp of Costa Mesa and defending Western Regional champion Robby Flock of the City of Industry, also will race Saturday night at Ventura Raceway. Three-quarter midgets will be part of both the Ventura and Ascot programs.

Tripp has won eight races this season, but only one at Ascot. Flock has won two of his three on Ascot’s one-quarter mile oval. In the TQs, Jay Drake holds a seven-point lead over Gary Schroeder after 19 races, but Schroeder is the only one to have won at both Ventura and Ascot.

HYDROPLANES--Tom D’Eath, the 1988 champion in Miss Budweiser, and Chip Hanauer, the defending champion in Circus Circus, will carry their battle for the unlimited hydroplane championship down to the year’s final two races, the Budweiser Thunderboat event Sunday on San Diego’s Mission Bay and the Las Vegas Silver Cup Sept. 23 on Lake Mead. D’Eath has 11,125 points to 10,552 for Hanauer. After qualifying runs Friday and Saturday, the first of seven five-lap heats Sunday will be at noon.

MOTORCYCLES--The American Motorcyclist Assn.’s final national road race will be held this weekend at Willow Springs Raceway, with superbikes, big twins, production-based supersports and endurance bikes on the two-day program. Doug Chandler of Salinas clinched the superbike championship last week in Topeka, Kan., but in the 250cc Grand Prix class, the final will determine the champion among Doug Brauneck of Dallas, Ga., Chris D’Aluision of West Redding, Conn., and Al Salaverria of San Francisco. All have won two events, and Brauneck is holding onto a two-point margin.

The Victorville speedway track championships Saturday night will conclude the season at Speedway USA. . . . National speedway champion Bobby Schwartz, recovered from a head injury he received when he fell last week at Ascot, will be back tonight at Ascot and Friday night at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. . . . The Plonkers Trials Club will hold an American Trials Assn. event Sunday at Cactus Flats, southeast of Lucerne Valley in San Bernardino County.

U.S. teams will be busy this weekend in world championship motocross and speedway races in Europe. Jeff Ward, Jeff Stanton and Damon Bradshaw will attempt to bring the United States its 10th consecutive victory in the Motocross des Nations at Vimmerby, Sweden. Ward will be making his seventh ride for the United States; he has never lost. . . . A speedway team of Sam Ermolenko, Kelly Moran, Rick Miller and Ronnie Correy will ride Sunday in the World Speedway Team Cup in Czechoslovakia against England, Denmark and the host Czechs.

OFF-ROAD RACING--Ivan Stewart, who has dominated Nevada desert racing this year, will try to move his domination into a stadium Saturday night when he drives his Toyota pickup in the Mickey Thompson Off-Road Championships at Sam Boyd Silver Bowl in Las Vegas. Stewart, 45, won his third consecutive Nevada race last week in the High Desert Racing Assn.’s Nevada 500. Robby Gordon, who withdrew from stadium racing to pursue a career in sports cars after winning the championship last year, will return to competition in a Ford truck entered by Venable Racing. Gordon is a replacement for Rod Millen, who is competing this weekend in the Asia Pacific Rally.

STOCK CARS--Saugus Speedway will have a fan appreciation night Saturday when the NASCAR Winston Racing Series sportsman cars hold their next to last meeting of the season on the one-third-mile paved oval. Outlaw minis, hobby stocks and Figure 8s will also be on the program. . . . Santa Maria Speedway will hold its 13th annual Bill Baker Stock Car Memorial Saturday night. . . . Cajon Speedway’s Saturday night show will feature Winston Racing Series sportsman cars. . . . Street stocks will race Friday night at Ventura Raceway.

NECROLOGY--A memorial service for Paul O’Shea, a former sports car champion, will be held Friday at 4 p.m. in the San Diego Automotive Museum in Balboa Park. O’Shea, 62, died last week. He won two Torrey Pines road races in 1955 driving a Mercedes-Benz 300SL.