MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : Parnelli Jones Returns to Ascot for Final Night

Parnelli Jones will be at Ascot Park tonight for the 50th annual Turkey Night Grand Prix midget race, which figures to be the last, since the track is scheduled to close.

Jones will be there to accept membership in the Midget Racing Hall of Fame and to swap stories with friends who remember him as the brash kid from Torrance who went on, with the late J.C. Agajanian’s help, to win the Indianapolis 500.

And he will be there as a former Turkey Night winner, having won in 1964, the year after he won the 500, and again in 1966.

But most important, Jones will be there to watch his sons, P.J., 21, and Page, 18, drive in the 100-lap Valvoline-United States Auto Club national championship race around Ascot’s short half-mile dirt oval.

The race is expected to attract more than 110 car-driver combinations, a USAC event record. Among them will be:

--Mel Kenyon, 57, of Lebanon, Ind., seven-time USAC champion who won the 1963 and ’75 Turkey Night races. This will be the 25th Thanksgiving night race for Kenyon, the leader in USAC midget race victories with 111.

--Ron Shuman of Tempe, Ariz., the California Racing Assn. sprint car champion, who has won six Turkey Night races--no one else has won more than two--including a remarkable four in a row from 1979 to 1982.

--Ron (Sleepy) Tripp of Costa Mesa, former two-time USAC champion and five-time Western States regional champion, who has won 30 USAC races at Ascot, but has never won on Thanksgiving night.

--Chuck Gurney of Livermore, winner of the last two Turkey Night races.

--Jac Haudenschild of Wooster, Ohio, a World of Outlaws sprint-car veteran who holds the one-lap midget record at Ascot.

Parnelli Jones, who won 25 USAC midget main events during his career, remembers best one that got away on a Thanksgiving evening 28 years ago.

“I was leading A.J. (Foyt) when my right front wheel fell off and I went cartwheeling down the track,” Jones recalled. “It was one of the few times I was ever upside down in an open-wheel car.

“The worst of it was that I felt I had A.J. handled. I had about half a straightaway on him. I wanted to win real bad because he had beaten me the two years before and he was driving my old car that Johnny Pouelsen owned. I was in a new one I’d bought in the Midwest.

“I won at Ascot in sports cars, midgets, sprint cars and late model stock cars, but I’ll never forget losing the one time I wanted to beat A.J. so bad.”

But Foyt didn’t win it, either. Billy Cantrell did.

“Of course, when it comes to thrills at Ascot, I get more from watching my boys than I ever did racing myself,” Parnelli said.

“Every time P.J. or Page gets out there, I get kind of anxious. More than I ever did when I was racing myself, but they’ve showed me they know what they’re doing.”

P.J., a student at El Camino College, is second only to Tripp in USAC Western States victories this season, even though he missed a number of races to compete on the American Racing Series. Tripp has 10, P.J. seven.

Page, who has won two TQ midget races at Ascot, won his first full midget race June 30 at Las Vegas.

Also being honored tonight in hall of fame ceremonies will be two other Turkey Night winners, Bullet Joe Garson (1958) and Bill Vukovich, who won in 1948 when the race was at Gilmore Stadium. A fourth honoree, Pancho Carter, never won on Thanksgiving, but clinched the 1972 USAC championship in the race.

Time trials will start at 6, racing at 8.

DRIVER OF YEAR--Al Unser Jr., the Indy car champion who won six of 16 races, was voted American driver of the year by a narrow margin over Dale Earnhardt, the NASCAR stock car champion. Geoff Brabham, the IMSA champion, finished third and Joe Amato, drag racing’s top fuel champion, was fourth.

SPRINT CARS--After 49 races on dirt, the California Racing Assn. will conclude its season with two races on asphalt at Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield. Defending champion Ron Shuman, who regained the lead over Rip Williams with a victory last Saturday in the Don Peabody Classic at Ascot Park, will be favored in Saturday night’s main event. The season ends Dec. 2.

MIDGETS--After tonight’s Ascot Park race, the USAC season will end Saturday night at Imperial Raceway in El Centro with a 40-lap main event on the three-eighths-mile dirt oval. Dave Strickland Jr. will be the driver to beat. He won at El Centro the last two years. . . . Even though he flipped during the final race of the USAC three-quarter midget season at Oildale, Jay Drake of Valencia had already clinched the season championship over Cory Kruseman of Ventura and Frank Deiny Jr. of Burbank.

DRAG RACING--The $40,000 National Hot Rod Assn.’s Pacific ET (elapsed time) championship series for sportsman racers will wind up Friday and Saturday at Bakersfield Raceway. Eliminations will start at 1 p.m. both days.

SPORTS CARS--The California Sports Car Club will hold two three-hour enduros Saturday and Sunday at Willow Springs Raceway.

BAJA AFTERMATH--Anna Cody Merritt of Los Olivos and Lillie Sweetland of Phoenix became the first female motorcycle team to finish a Baja 1,000. They rode a Kawasaki owned by overall winner Larry Roeseler to finish seventh in 17 hours 17 minutes in the 250cc class.