MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : Williams’ Fast Finish Has Him in Driver’s Seat

The California Racing Assn. season opener was only 12 hours away last February when Rip Williams agreed to be Frank Lewis’ sprint car driver.

It took Williams 30 races to win his first main event. By then, John Redican had won seven races, Brad Noffsinger six and defending champion Ron Shuman three.

Once Williams won, however, there seemed no stopping him. He won five of the next 10 and had a string of four in a row that ended last Saturday when he finished second.

The late-season surge moved the veteran driver from Yorba Linda to the top of the CRA standings--he is five points ahead of Shuman--with three races remaining.

The 13th annual Don Peabody Classic on Saturday night will be the final sprint car race on Ascot Park’s half-mile dirt oval after 33 seasons. Then there will be two Sunday afternoon races, Nov. 25 and Dec. 2, on the high-banked pavement at Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield.

“I’d just as soon have it end on dirt, but I’ll try and do whatever it takes to win the whole thing,” Williams said. Of the 53 CRA races this season, 49 will have been on dirt tracks.

Williams credits the combination of a new engine, built by Danny Brewer of Shaver Specialties in Torrance, and the sorting out of his 1989 Gambler chassis with his sudden improvement.

“We played catch-up all season after I made a deal with Frank (Lewis) the night before the opener at Bakersfield,” Williams said. “We put together a couple of different cars to get one that worked to our liking, and when we got that new engine it gave us a lot more horsepower. Everything just started clicking.”

Williams impressed Lewis, who doubles as president of the CRA, last year when he drove his car twice in Arizona on loan, winning at Tucson and running second at Manzanita.

This season has gone the opposite of last year, when Williams was in the hunt for the championship late in the season, had to drop out of one race with a flat, and was injured when his car burned to the ground the week before the Peabody race.

Williams showed up at Ascot for the Peabody, swathed in bandages, and finished second to Shuman in a borrowed car.

“You can work all week every week and drive your head off, but sooner or later luck plays a part,” he said. “So far this year our luck has been a whole lot better, but you never know. Look what happened to Ronnie (Shuman) last week.”

Friday night, at Manzanita, Shuman was twice penalized two positions for jumping the field on a restart while in the lead. He eventually finished second behind Williams. Saturday night at Ascot, Shuman led for 25 laps and appeared to have the race well in hand when he collided with a lapped car and got knocked into the wall. Before his crew could get him back, Shuman had dropped to 11th place and lost 27 points to Williams.

“It’s been a long year, working 10 hours a day on our regular jobs and then working nights on the car,” said Williams, who tests underground storage tanks for leaks during the day. “Me and two other guys, Rich Atkins and Don Turl, are in the shop every night during the week. The only time I see my wife and kids is on Sunday. Or at the race track.

“Lucky for me, my wife Becky is a big race fan. She had our second boy, Austin, last month and brought him to his first race when he was five days old. That beat Cody, his brother, who was six days old when he went to his first one.”

The Williams children are following tradition. Rip--that’s his given name--was five days old when his mother, Idella, took him to watch his father, Bob, drive in a micro-midget race at El Toro in 1956.

The Peabody, the richest sprint car race in Ascot history with a purse of $42,000, will offer more than a race for the championship among Williams, Shuman and Noffsinger. Also entered are Bubby Jones, Williams’ brother-in-law and a four-time Peabody winner; Tim Green of San Jose, the Northern Auto Racing Club champion; Brent Kaeding of Campbell, Calif., a former NARC champion; and World of Outlaws driver Jac Haudenschild of Wooster, Ohio.

Racing Notes

STOCK CARS--The $1-million prize that goes to NASCAR’s Winston Cup champion will be at stake Sunday for three-time champion Dale Earnhardt in a Chevrolet and Mark Martin in a Ford in the Atlanta Journal 500 at Atlanta International Speedway. Earnhardt leads by six points.

THE GORDONS--Bob Gordon, 42, of Orange, won the Baja 1,000 off-road race last week driving a VW-powered Chenowth buggy. The next day, his son, Robby, 21, won the IMSA GTO-GTU race at Del Mar in a Mercury Cougar. Robby, who also drove in the Baja 1,000 as defending champion, will make his first start in a major stock car race Saturday in Junior Dunleavy’s Ford Thunderbird in the ARCA 500 at Atlanta Raceway.

MIDGETS--Three races remain in the United States Auto Club season--Saturday night at Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale, Thanksgiving night at Ascot Park and Nov. 24 at El Centro. Jeff Gordon, 19, of Pittsboro, Ind., holds a 35-point lead over Mike Streicher of Findlay, Ohio, in his bid to become USAC’s youngest midget champion. Defending champion Russ Gamester of Peru, Ind., is another 22 points behind.

MOTORCYCLES--The U.S. 500cc Grand Prix, held Aug. 28 at Glen Helen Park, will be shown Sunday at noon on Channel 4. It features a tense chase between world champion Eric Geboers and Johnny O’Mara. . . . The American Road Racing Assn. will hold Round 11 of its Formula Gran Prix 12-race sprint series this weekend at Willow Springs Raceway. The season ends Dec. 16. . . . Final race of the Coors/Kawasaki series at Ventura Raceway will be held Saturday night.

VINTAGE CARS--High-performance cars designed by Carroll Shelby will be featured this weekend in the sixth annual Palm Springs road races and concours d’elegance. Among them will be GT-40, 427 Cobra, Cobra Daytona, GT 500 Shelby, Sunbeam Tiger and the new Dodge Viper, designed by the former racer. Shelby will be feted Saturday night at Wyndham Hotel in a roast that will benefit the Cedars Sinai Medical Center heart transplant fund. Shelby recently had a heart transplant.

LAND SPEED--Don Carr of Sun Valley, driving the Carr & Kaplan AA Lakester, became the first to exceed 300 m.p.h. at El Mirage Dry Lake when he ran 306.95 m.p.h. last Sunday during a SoCal Timing Assn. meet. This broke Carr’s record of 296.54 set last month.

OFF ROAD--The final round of the Miller Challenge Series will be held Sunday at San Bernardino’s Glen Helen Park. Also at Glen Helen will be a CRC vintage motocross race.