MOTOR RACING : Cars Are New, but Formula One Rivalry Is Old: Senna vs. Prost

Two years ago, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost--McLaren/Honda teammates at the time--crashed into one another in the next-to-last race of the Formula One season in Japan, and the incident enabled Prost to win his third Grand Prix championship.

Last year, Senna and Prost, the latter now in a Ferrari, collided in the first corner of the same race in Japan, and the accident gave the championship to Senna--the Brazilian’s second.

On both occasions, the loser cried foul, to no avail.

Their rivalry is so intense that Prost, in agreeing to an extension of his contract with Ferrari through 1992, included a condition that Senna could not become his teammate. There have been rumors that Senna was considering such a move next year.

As the 1991 season is about to open Sunday on the streets of Phoenix, Senna and Prost again appear to be head and shoulders above the field. One question jokingly asked is if followers of the world championship circuit will have to wait until they get to Suzuka, Japan, again to see which one--Senna or Prost--will knock the other out of the championship in a best two-out-of-three crash scenario.

To head off just such a possibility, Federation Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA), ruling body of Formula One, has formed a safety committee that has the authority to suspend racing licenses in the event of excessively aggressive driving. Lesser penalties may be imposed for minor skirmishes.

Sunday’s Iceberg USA Grand Prix will be the third for Phoenix, and the bitter rivals split the first two, Prost winning in 1989 and Senna last year.

Neither race was very exciting, and neither attracted much interest in Phoenix, where stock cars, Indy cars, sprint cars and midgets are more the area’s staple in racing.

This year, in hopes of making a better race for a bigger crowd, race officials have altered the 2.315-mile downtown course to open it up for more speed and more passing. Several second-gear, 90-degree turns have been replaced by very quick fourth- or fifth-gear corners. The race will be 82 laps or approximately 190 miles.

Two qualifying sessions, at 1 p.m. Friday and Saturday, will set the 26-car field for Sunday’s 2 p.m. start in front of the pits along Jefferson Street, in the heart of the city.

Senna, who won last year with his McLaren powered by a Honda V10, will have a new V12 this season. The six-speed, normally aspirated V12 engine, developed in the Honda R&D; shops near Tokyo, has been mated with a new carbon fiber composite chassis built in England. The car was tested for the first time last Thursday in the rain at Estoril, Portugal, before being flown to Phoenix.

The new car may benefit Senna’s teammate, Gerhard Berger of Austria, more than it does the champion. Berger, who took Prost’s place on the McLaren team last year, suffered all season from having to cram his 6-foot frame into a cockpit designed for a much smaller man.

McLaren has won six of the last seven championships.

Prost, who won five races last year for Ferrari to bring his career total to a record 44, also will be in a new car in his quest for a fourth Grand Prix championship. He, too, has a new teammate--Jean Alesi, a young Frenchman who finished second to Senna last year at Phoenix. Alesi, after only one season in Formula One, was so sought-after that he signed with three teams for 1991 before settling on Ferrari.

Other potential race winners include Nelson Piquet, the three-time world champion from Brazil who drives a Benneton-Ford; and Nigel Mansell of England, who left Ferrari to drive for fellow countryman Frank Williams.

With no American driver in Formula One, Piquet comes closest to filling the void. He attended Acalanes High School, in Lafayette, Calif., in hopes of making tennis his career before concentrating on racing. Piquet won the final two races last year and will have a new car designed by John Barnard, who designed championship cars for McLaren and Ferrari. The Benneton team, which also includes former Indy car driver Roberto Moreno, will stick with the Ford Cosworth V8 engine.

Moreno finished second to Piquet in his first race for the team last year in Japan.

MOTORCYCLES--The Coors Spring race for speedway bikes is Friday night at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. A similar race scheduled for Sunday at San Bernardino has been canceled. The Costa Mesa field will include British League riders Billy Hamill, Ronnie Correy and Gary Hicks, plus local favorites such as national champion Mike Faria, Steve Lucero and Bobby Schwartz, who won the last four spring races. . . . Five riders advanced from last week’s American Final to the next stage of the world championship ladder: Rick Miller, Sam Ermolenko, Correy, Kelly Moran and Hamill, who won a runoff with Bobby Ott for the final qualifying berth.

SPRINT CARS--After four California Racing Assn. races, there have been four winners in the wingless sprinters’ new season. Race No. 5 will be Saturday night at Kings Speedway in Hanford. Lealand McSpadden, who won last week in Phoenix, climbed out of his sprint car into a midget and won an Arizona Racing Assn. main event the same night.

POWERBOATS--The Long Beach Rum Run, opening event of the offshore racing season, was canceled last Saturday because of dangerous debris in the ocean from the previous day’s storm. The 110-mile race, around Catalina Island, will not be rescheduled.

MOTOCROSS--The Continental Motosport Club’s weekly night racing program, which ran for 20 years at Ascot Park, will move to Glen Helen Park in San Bernardino this year. Opening night is April 26.

The final two races of the Coors/Kawasaki winter series at Ventura Raceway have been canceled to allow officials to prepare the track for the United States Auto Club’s ESPN Saturday Night Thunder midget race series starting April 6.

DRAG RACING--The United Sand Assn. will open its 1991 season Saturday night with more than 200 vehicles anticipated at Glen Helen Park. It will also mark the debut of Stu Peters, founder-president of the CMC, as general manager of Don Brown’s off-road vehicle park at Glen Helen.