MOTOR RACING : Smith Drives for Blind in Second ARS Season

In big-time racing these days, a driver stands a better chance of getting a top ride if he can bring some sponsorship money to the team.

Mark Smith hasn’t hit the big time yet, but already he has a different slant on the sponsorship routine.

Last year, in his rookie season in the American Racing Series, a training series for Indy car drivers, he did the sponsoring. Smith, of McMinnville, Ore., sponsored the Seeing Eye Foundation, which breeds, trains and provides guide dogs for the blind.

En route to becoming rookie of the year, he earned $71,000 and gave half of it to the foundation.

Smith will be driving in the series again this year--it makes its season debut at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach April 14 with a new name, the Firestone Indy Lights Series--and again he will donate some of his winnings to the foundation.

This year, however, he also is serving as a spokesman for the National Society to Prevent Blindness. In recorded public service TV announcements, he asks people to prevent eye injuries by using common-sense precautions.

Although he is only 23, Smith has been driving for 12 years. He moved up to the ARS series last season after having won the Super Vee driving championship in 1989. In the 16-race ARS series, he was second twice and third twice and finished third in the series standings.

Two Southland speedways will run high-profile events this weekend.

The United States Auto Club’s Western States midgets will kick off ESPN’s “Saturday Night Thunder” program Friday and Saturday nights on the Ventura Raceway’s slightly short of a quarter-mile dirt oval, and Cajon Speedway will open its season Saturday night with NASCAR’s Southwest Tour stock cars.

At Ventura, Friday night’s racing will consist of practice and qualifying, the qualifying times holding for each of the next four Saturdays, when the “Thunder” series will be televised from the track.

Competing will be Sleepy Tripp, five-time Western States champion; and Western States regulars Robby Flock, Frank Pedregon, Wally Pankratz and Terry Ferrer, joined by such USAC national series drivers as Stan Fox and Johnnie Parsons.

USAC’s three-quarter midgets will run each night as well.

At Cajon, the Bud 100 will open the Southwest Tour on the three-eighths-mile paved track.

In the field will be Doug George of Atwater, Calif., the defending series champion, in a Ford Thunderbird. Former winners expected to run include Ray Hooper Jr. and Dennis Dyer.

DRAG BOATS--The International Hot Boat Assn. will be back at Puddingstone Lake in San Dimas Saturday and Sunday, the top-fuel hydros turning speeds in excess of 200 m.p.h. in the Chief Spring Nationals. Ron Braaksma of Downey, 1990 IHBA top-fuel champion, will race against Kyle Walker, Ralph Padilla, Carter Read, Gary Kincaid, Steve Varner, Tom Cantrell and Jay Haroutunian, among others. Braaksma recently won the season-opening Winternationals at Phoenix. IHBA is using a shortened starting system this year that, it says, is as close to a standing start as possible. Competition is scheduled for 8 a.m. each day, with the faster classes scheduled to begin Sunday’s eliminations at 11.

STOCK CARS--Sportsman, street and hobby stocks will race Saturday night at Saugus Speedway, and the late models and modifieds will be in action that night at Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield.

VINTAGE RACING--Old-time cars of the Western Racing Assn. will run Saturday night at the Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino in conjunction with the weekly stock car program.

MOTORCYCLES--The biggest events of the American Trials Assn., season will be run this weekend in Lucerne Valley. The California Nationals and Schreiber Cup races will be run Saturday and El Trial de Espana XXI on Sunday. The course is about four miles east of Lucerne Valley, off Old Woman Springs Road. Competition will start at 9 a.m. . . . Team Suzuki Endurance of Lake Elsinore, with Kurt Hall and Britt Turkington riding, won the second round of the WERA National Endurance Series, a six-hour race, last Saturday at Talladega, Ala.

SPRINT CARS--The California Racing Assn.’s non-winged cars will move on to Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix Saturday after having been rained out last weekend at Petaluma.

GRAND PRIX OF LONG BEACH--Supporting races to the CART Indy car feature April 14 will include the annual pro-celebrity race and the IMSA GTO/GTU event April 13, and the Indy Lights and Atlantic series events April 14.