MOTOR RACING : Teacher Insolo Has No Trouble Getting Germone to Go to Class

Saugus Speedway, with its oval of almost-flat asphalt, barely a third of a mile around, poses problems for race car drivers unlike any other track.

Jimmy Insolo, who has driven there on and off for 20 years and is a former track champion, calls it “the hardest place to get around, of all the tracks I’ve run, and I started there.”

Drivers say if you can find the right line around Saugus, you can find it anywhere. The Saugus line is different from other bullring ovals because, while circling the track every 16 to 20 seconds, cars want to slide off the asphalt. It almost feels as if the banking is tilted downward instead of slightly upward.

NASCAR’s Southwest Tour, which in the past eight years has become the most successful stock car racing series on the West Coast, returns to Saugus this Saturday night for the Miller Genuine Draft 100. It is the fifth of 17 races in the All-American Challenge series for late model cars.

Rick Carelli of Denver, winner of the last three tour races and defending series champion, will be favored against a field that includes Ron Hornaday Jr. of Palmdale, last year’s race winner, and Ray Hooper Jr., also of Palmdale, the track record-holder at 15.529 seconds, or 77.275 m.p.h.

A driver definitely on the move is Bryan Germone, at 23 one of the youngest entries. Germone, a junior college student from Sebastapol, Calif., was rookie of the year in 1990 and after four races this season is fourth in the overall standings. In 42 races, he has finished 12 times in the top five, although he has yet to win.

A remarkable fact about Germone is how well he has done with a minimum of experience. At 16 he jumped from go-karts to street stocks and won the track championship at Lakeport Speedway, about an hour’s drive north of his home in Northern California.

His knowledge of racing was so minimal that when he and his father towed the stock car to Lakeport for Bryan’s first race, they thought the track was dirt. It was asphalt.

“I guess you could say we were kind of naive,” Germone said. After three seasons and two championships at Lakeport, the Germones decided to tackle the Southwest Tour with a new Chevrolet.

“After the first few races, I felt I’d bit off more than I could chew,” Germone said. “I’d never driven a car with slick tires and that much horsepower.”

He turned out to be a fast learner and won rookie honors with six top-five finishes in 18 starts, including a second at Mesa Marin in Bakersfield. Last year, in midseason, when the team found itself mired in the middle of the pack, Germone hired Insolo as co-crew chief and mentor.

“My job is to teach him some of the things I learned over the years,” Insolo said. “Maybe more important than that is trying to teach him what not to do, the bad habits drivers get into. He also needs experience in learning his way around tracks, especially at places like Saugus, and that’s where I can help. A big part of racing is the mind game--before you get into your car--and I try to teach him not to let the other guys get to him. “

OFFROAD--Robby Gordon, who brought Ford a victory in the Trans Am sedan race at Long Beach, will try to do the same Saturday in an offroad race when he drives a Ford pickup in the Tecate SCORE San Felipe 250 in Baja California. Prospects of a Ford-Chevrolet confrontation ended when Chevy withdrew defending champion Larry Ragland’s entry as part of an offroad racing cutback. Walker Evans and Brian Stewart will be in Dodge trucks. Parnelli Jones will drive a Ford mini-pickup.

SPEEDWAY BIKES--The Speedway USA season in Victorville, scheduled to open Saturday night, has been postponed to May 2. . . . Shawn McConnell, a 16-year veteran of speedway racing from Brea, has emerged as a challenger to national champions such as Mike Faria, Steve Lucero, Bobby Schwartz and Brad Oxley in weekly Friday night racing at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.

SPRINT CARS--California Racing Assn. drivers launch their annual Tour of the ‘90s with a race Saturday night at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix. From there, the wingless warriors of the CRA head east for 12 races before returning home May 24 at Bakersfield Speedway. They will be at 81 Speedway in Wichita, Kan., next Tuesday night. . . . Winged sprint cars will race Saturday night at Santa Maria Speedway in the Golden State Challenge series.

MIDGETS--Three weekly shows at Ventura Raceway on ESPN’s Saturday Night Thunder have produced three different winners. Most of the country’s leading midget-car drivers will be there again Saturday night for Round 4 of the five-race TV series. Curiously, the last two winners, Jimmy Sills and Lealand McSpadden, are better known as sprint car drivers.

SPORTS CARS--California Sports Car Club will hold regional championship races Saturday and Sunday at Willow Springs Raceway with 33 classes of cars, including Formula Atlantic, Formula Ford, Showroom Stock, Sports Racing, GT and Super Production. Qualifying is Saturday with racing starting at 8 a.m. Sunday.

DRAG RACING--Almost 500 sportsman drivers are expected to compete this weekend in the opening event of the National Hot Rod Assn.’s District 7 Winston Racing Series season at Bakersfield Raceway. The three-day program will determine champions in eight categories and is the first of six events on the Pacific Division schedule. . . . Bernie Fedderly, crew chief for Larry Minor’s team for 10 years, has resigned and will be replaced by Larry Meyer, who was left without a team when baseball star Jack Clark parked his top fuel dragster for lack of sponsorship. Meyer will handle Cruz Pedregon’s funny car with Lee Beard remaining with Ed McCulloch’s top fueler.

MOTORCYCLES--The Toyota Grand Prix of Laguna Seca on Sunday will feature a rematch between Scott Russell and Doug Polen after their photo finish at the Superbike season opener last month at Daytona International Speedway. Russell, on a Kawasaki, and Polen, on a Ducati, battled for two hours, averaging more than 110 m.p.h., before Russell’s dramatic pass at the finish line gave him the victory by 0.182 seconds.

MOTOCROSS--Damon Bradshaw, who rode a Yamaha to two Camel Supercross victories last week at Pontiac, Mich., has regained the stadium motocross lead from defending champion Jean-Michel Bayle and his Honda teammate, Jeff Stanton, as the series heads for Las Vegas and Saturday night’s Coors Light Challenge at Sam Boyd Silver Bowl.

RALLY--Hot rod pioneers Ak Miller and Ray Brock will drive a propane-powered Ford pickup in the La Carrera de La Paz, a five-day, 1,300-mile run from Mexico City through Acapulco and Guatemala to San Salvador. The rally is being sponsored by the Mexican government to promote tourism to El Salvador.

NECROLOGY--Ray Kelly, a veteran Southern California stock car driver, died of cancer last Friday at his home in Bloomington, Calif. Kelly, 45, who owned a heavy equipment repair business in San Bernardino, raced on the NASCAR Winston West circuit from the mid-1980s until 1990. He is survived by his wife, Constance, and three daughters. Services are today at 11 a.m. at 1st American Baptist Church in in Fontana.