MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : This Racing Could Rate as Vintage Stuff
A Porsche vs. Alfa Romeo Challenge, presented by the Vintage Auto Racing Assn., is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday on Willow Springs Raceway’s 2.5-mile hillside road course. More than 50 Porsches and Alfas are expected for two days of practice and racing.
Also participating in the holiday racing program will be an additional 100 VARA cars, including Corvettes, Mustangs, Cobras, Lotuses, Ferraris, Mercedes-Benzes and McLarens. Vintage motorcycles from the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Assn. also will be featured.
Qualifying races start Saturday at 1:30 p.m., with championship finals on Sunday beginning at 11 a.m.
On the weekend of Aug. 1-2, the Porsche Owners Club will hold an International Driving Challenge and car show at Willow Springs.
The fund-raising event will also feature members of other racing clubs as well as the 670-member Porsche Owners Club. The Southern California Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities will be the beneficiary.
More than 150 competition cars are expected, plus another 100 show cars, according to John Jackson and Dave Bouzaglou, POC committee chairmen.
A unique event will be the challenge relay, in which six teams of six driver-car combinations will compete in a handicap event. Cars, which will race three laps each, will be handicapped off their performance in time trials.
As important as the drivers, however, may be each team’s designated runner. At the end of each three-lap segment, cars enter the pits and stop at a mid-pit cone. At that time, a runner races from the stopped car to the last car in the team’s line and tags the next driver, who then takes off for his three laps. The process is completed until all six cars have finished their laps.
“It’s not designed to be a marque vs. marque competition,” Jackson said. “It’s grass-roots racing. We would prefer, in fact, to have teams made up of different types of cars. Because of the handicapping, it won’t make any difference if one is a full-blown race car and another is a basic street car like a Porsche 912. Theoretically, if our handicapping is on the money, we’ll have the wildest six-car finish you ever saw.”
Briefly
STOCK CARS--Last weekend was not a good one for Rick Carelli. The Denver driver lost his lead in both the Winston West and Southwest Tour series in races in Portland, Ore., and Bakersfield. Each time Carelli was leading the race before being slowed by mechanical problems and each time the winning driver--Bill Sedgwick in Winston West at Portland and Doug George in the Southwest Tour at Bakersfield--took over the series lead.
Grand American modifieds, one of the most popular classes of the NASCAR Winston Racing Series, will headline Saugus Speedway’s holiday program Saturday night. Included will be street and hobby stocks, Figure 8s, destruction derby and a fireworks show. . . . Modified pony stocks and Super Vs will race Saturday night at Orange Show Speedway, with motorcycle wheelie expert Doug Domokos as an added attraction. . . . Santa Maria Speedway will feature a 250-lap factory enduro Saturday night. . . . Ventura Raceway will spotlight street and mini stocks, IMCA modifieds and dwarf cars Saturday night.
SPRINT CARS--Points leader Lealand McSpadden will return to California Racing Assn. action Saturday night when the wingless cars move to Las Vegas Speedway and its three-eighths mile paved oval. Bobby Mishnowicz of Dominguez Hills scored his first CRA main event victory last week in Bakersfield while McSpadden was racing in a Silver Crown dirt car race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. McSpadden failed to qualify for the main event.
OFF ROAD--Walker Evans, two-time defending overall champion in the 21st annual Fireworks 250, drew the No. 1 starting position for Saturday’s 221-mile race in the Stoddard Valley region near Barstow. The start-finish line for the 4 p.m. event will be adjacent to the Sidewinder exit off Interstate 15. The Riverside veteran, driving a Dodge truck, will lead nearly 175 vehicles in 15 classes for cars and trucks in the fourth event of the High Desert Racing Assn.’s six-race U.S.A. Cup series.
MIDGETS--United States Auto Club midgets and TQs will hold a western regional doubleheader Saturday night at Cajon Speedway in El Cajon. Super modifieds will also run at Cajon.
