What Can Unser Do After a Clean Sweep? : Auto racing: All of his 1990 goals have been accomplished, but there remains a race to win, today at Laguna Seca.

Al Unser Jr., Little Al to his racing peers and friends, is goal-oriented.

Before the start of this year’s CART Indy car season, the 28-year-old second generation driver set three primary goals: 1. Win the Indy car championship; 2. Win on an oval for the first time; 3. Win a 500-mile race.

He accomplished them all.

So what goals are left?

“Win Laguna Seca, then start getting ready to win the championship again,” he said matter-of-factly while preparing his Lola-Chevrolet for today’s Champion Spark Plug 300 kilometer race on the twisting, hillside Laguna Seca Raceway course.

“The nice part is that we won the championship,” he said. “The hard part is going to be repeating what we did this year.”

What he and the Galles-Kraco team have done this year was to win six races--including a record four in a row--to clinch the $400,000 PPG Cup bonus in the next-to-last race of the season. He won consecutive races at Toronto, Michigan, Denver and Vancouver and also won at Long Beach and Milwaukee.

“If I can win here, it will be seven and a CART record and I’d like that. I’ve won twice at Laguna Seca, but not in a championship race,” Unser said. “I don’t have to worry about being careful and running for points now that the championship is ours, so I’m going all out to win.”

Unser won the Marlboro Challenge, a special non-points race, last year the day before the Champion 500, and in 1982 he won a Can-Am race en route to the series championship.

“Winning at Laguna Seca always means something special to a driver because it is such a wonderful facility,” he said. “It’s a true road racing track. It’s got plenty of hills and the corkscrew is really something else.”

The corkscrew is a three-quarter-mile stretch from the top of the course that drops more than 200 feet in a series of switchback turns.

Unser, who won 13 races on road courses before his first victory on an oval, scored his breakthrough on Milwaukee’s mile oval and followed that with his first 500-mile victory, at Michigan International Speedway. The Michigan race was one of the closest and most exciting in Indy car annals, with Unser and Galles-Kraco teammate Bobby Rahal running in the fastest 500-mile race in CART history. The two traded the lead, often two or three times in the same lap, as they weaved and bobbed through traffic until Rahal found himself caught out on a caution flag and Unser slipped through to win with an average speed of 189.727 m.p.h.

What surprised spectators, both in person and on TV, was the tense high-speed duel between teammates.

“I wouldn’t say it was scary out there, but it was pretty serious,” Unser said. “I guess that showed everyone how much respect Bobby and I have for each other. There aren’t a lot of drivers I would have diced with like that.

“I put my life in Bobby Rahal’s hands several times at Michigan, and it was great racing. I respect him to the utmost as a race car driver, and I guess that’s why we did what we did, passing each other twice a lap and so on. We were running very close, wheel to wheel, and each of us held our own line, and I can tell you we were both trying very hard to win. There’s no holding back between us just because we’re on the same team.”

When Rick Galles and Maurice Kraines, owner of the Kraco team, merged their teams for the 1990 season with Unser and Rahal as drivers, most Indy car observers felt that having two high-profile drivers on the same team would not work.

“Bobby and I were close friends off the track, with our wives being close friends, too, but before we started testing back last March and April we really didn’t know a lot about each other. But as the season went along we found we worked real well together,” Unser said. “I know a lot of people don’t believe us, because race drivers all want to win themselves. But with both Bobby and myself, we want to see the team win before we want to see ourselves win. That’s being very unselfish, but that’s the way it is.”

Such an attitude is easy to have when you have won six races and a series championship, but how does it feel if you’ve finished second five times and have failed to win a race for the first time in your eight years as an Indy car driver?

“Sure, I want to win, but with all the attention being paid Al, and rightfully so, not many people realize that even without winning, I’ve had my best year since 1987,” Rahal said.

That was the year Rahal won his second consecutive PPG Cup championship for the late Jim Trueman’s Truesports team.

“And I couldn’t come much closer to winning a race than I did at Michigan. I drove that day about as hard and fast as I can. The car has been working very well, the team is very strong and I couldn’t be happier to see anyone win than Al. Unless it was myself.”

Rahal has one last chance to win today on a course he once seemed to own. From 1984 to 1987, Rahal won four consecutive times at Laguna Seca.

Unser’s Indy car championship is the sixth for the Albuquerque, N. M., racing family. His father, Al, won in 1970, 1983 and 1985, the last when he edged his son by one point. Bobby Unser, Al’s brother and Al Jr.’s uncle, won in 1968 and 1974.

Al Unser Jr. beat Michael Andretti for the championship in a second-generation points race. In 1969 their fathers battled to the final race before Mario Andretti beat Al Unser to the championship.

“There’s a special satisfaction in beating Michael, sure, especially this year since he was pretty much everybody’s choice to win before the season started,” Unser said.

“Then it’s sort of special, too, because I’ve known Michael since I was 10 or 11, and we’ve raced each other since the day we met: go-karts, snowmobiles, bikes, everything. Our fathers were teammates for several years, and we were together a lot. It’s not like we’re the Hatfields and the McCoys, feuding all the time. But we’re definitely competitive.”

Unser clinched the championship two weeks ago at Nazareth, Pa. A crash knocked Unser out of that race, but Andretti finished only fifth. It left Unser with 194 points to 157 for Andretti, and the maximum points available today is 22.

“It was a great feeling to win, but having Little Al in the hospital when we won it kind of took the edge off a little,” Galles said. Shortly after the halfway point in the Nazareth race, Unser was involved in an accident with Indy 500 winner Arie Luyendyk and Danny Sullivan. Unser suffered a mild concussion and was taken to Eaton (Pa.) Hospital for observation.

“I didn’t think I’d be laying in a hospital bed with a headache when I won the championship,” Unser said. “But I’ll take it.”

Both the younger Andretti and Unser have been rumored to be switching from Indy cars to Formula One, but Unser said he’s decided to stay with Indy cars.

“The rumors last summer were true that I was thinking about Formula One, and I had a few feelers, but after I signed my new contract with Galles at Toronto, it ended all that,” Unser said. “I know that Michael is still serious enough about it that he’d make the move if conditions were right.

“Personally, from my aspect of it, I’d like to see Michael go. It would definitely be one less man to outrun to win the races. And that’s what it’s all about. Winning.”