Outlook Is Black, Not Bleak : Prappas Finds No Gold in Rainbow-Colored Cars

Well, at least Ted Prappas has a black car.

Whatever success he has had in racing has been achieved in black cars. And the car he will drive Sunday in the 76th Indianapolis 500 is predominantly black, with screaming orange highlights.

So now all the 36-year-old rookie from Los Angeles has to do is go out and win the race?

Not in his wildest dreams.

Prappas is in the race, but barely. He qualified his 1991 Lola-Chevrolet at 219.173 m.p.h., slowest in the 33-car field.

But last row or not, he is in the race, and now he hopes to make the most of it.

“We just want to finish,” he said. “We just want to see the checkered flag.

“I think we’re good in that respect in that we’ve got the Chevrolet, the ‘A’ motor. It’s really the only proven (power plant).

“The new Chevy B, they’ve had their problems with that. It’s never run a 500-mile race yet.

“The Buicks have been around this place quite a bit, but they’ve never had the best of luck in the race. I think they wind them up quite a bit for qualifying, and I think they have to back them down quite a bit for the race and . . . there just doesn’t seem to be the reliability there.

“The Ford is obviously fast, but you don’t really know what they’ve done for qualifying--if they’ve really pumped them up, and if they’ve got to back them off a little bit on race day. And you don’t know if they’re going to hold up. . . .

“So I think we’ve got one of the combinations, with the ’91 car--even the ’92 cars have had their problems--so for getting to the finish, I think we’ve got one of the best packages.”

Finishing has its rewards. Usually, finishers are in the top 10. And last year, anyone finishing eighth or better earned at least $200,000 for his team.

Then there is the battle among the rookies. A first-timer starting from the last row and finishing in the top 10 probably will be voted rookie of the year.

All of which does not mean that Prappas intends to spend the day Sunday just driving around, staying out of everyone else’s way. If the opportunity to race arises, he said, especially late in the race, he intends to give it a go.

“I think we’ll try, yeah,” he said. “If we can get the car working good and I’m in a position. . . . Obviously, if you’re two laps ahead of the guy behind you and three laps down to the guy ahead of you, there’s no real reason to go get him.

“But if we’ve got five or six guys on the same lap as us and our car seems to be working good, we’ll see what we can do.

“But we’re not going to risk anything, this being our first one. We’re not going to risk a (finishing) place or the car.

“That’s easy to say now, of course, but you usually change your mind if a guy’s right alongside you. I can’t even tell you what my emotions will be if we get to that last 100-mile mark.”

Already, compared to last year, Prappas is a success here. Then, he came, he saw, he crashed--twice.

“We started out Monday and lost a motor right off the bat and never got one back in the car till Friday afternoon,” he said. “Then, that first weekend we crashed the car, (it) took us all week to repair it, and we never got out again till the next weekend and we crashed the car again.

“I think we got more laps here in one day (this season) than we did all month last year.”

Actually, the Indianapolis experience has been an eye-opener in more ways than one for Prappas. A road-racing veteran--he finished sixth a year ago in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach--he has been learning to drive, not just the Speedway in particular, but oval tracks in general.

“We’ve got no experience on ovals in Indy cars,” he said. “We did the few that (the American Racing Series, now Indy Lights) did, but the two years that I was with them, they only did the superspeedway at Pocono and the mile ovals. And realistically, that’s a whole different type of car because it’s a flat-bottom car, compared to a ground-effects car (which sticks to the track better and, therefore, is considerably faster).”

Throughout Prappas’ racing career, from Super Vee through ARS, he has done best in black cars. In his final season in the Indy Lights, after a promising start in a predominantly white car, his season turned sour.

Finally, with two races to go, car owner Norm Turley of Long Beach, for whom Prappas still drives, had the car repainted--black. Prappas promptly finished third at Nazareth, Pa., then won the season finale at Laguna Seca.

“Don’t really know (what it is),” Prappas said. “I bought a black pickup truck in 1977, when I turned 21, and in 1981 I bought a black Camaro, just because I liked them. Then we got into the Super Vee series and had a bunch of cars--red and white, and blue and white. All of a sudden we painted the car black and white, and we won our first Super Vee race.

“After that we went into Formula Atlantic, and I just happened to be with a guy that always ran a black car and we ended up winning four or five races and the championship. Then I went right to ARS, and that team always ran a black car and we won the race in Detroit with them and finished fifth in the series, then I came along with Norm in the beginning of ’89 for ARS.”

They struggled with a red, white and blue car.

“Finally, Norm said, ‘Let’s forget this; let’s just paint this thing black.’ We went out and finished third right away at Nazareth and won Laguna. So just after that, when we finally got into Indy cars, it was just a given. There were no questions about it, the car was going to be black.”

Actually, what he would like most is a hot car of any color. He can paint it black.

“We’d like to have two brand-new ’92 cars sitting in (the garage) here, instead of ’91 cars,” he said. “We’d like to be able to go testing. . . . I complain a little bit about it, but then again there’s 33 guys starting this race and probably 33 million people in the world that would like to start it, so it’s hard to really complain a lot.

“Yet again, I would like a really good shot at it. Next year, if we can get a good sponsor and a brand-new ’93 car and 10 or 15 days of testing and have everything that we’d like. . . .”

But this year, Prappas will be driving just to finish. And if he can do that, well, it’s a new race here every year. Maybe next year, there will be a new black car for him as well.