MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : This Rookie Knows the Ropes

Ron Hornaday Jr. is on a stock-car racing roll that he hopes will continue through Saturday night at Cajon Speedway.

The Palmdale driver won last week’s NASCAR Southwest Tour event at Stockton to take the lead in that series, and Saturday night in El Cajon, he will try for his first victory as a rookie in the Winston West series.

Hornaday, 34, enters the $33,500 Thrifty Food & Gas 200, at 75 miles, second in the rookie standings, three points behind three-time race winner Rick Carelli of Denver.

“The other drivers don’t call me a rookie,” Hornaday said. “I’ve been racing most of them around here for years. The only thing I’m a rookie at is driving a heavier car that doesn’t handle anything like what we’ve been used to.”

Although he is still looking for his first Winston West victory, Hornaday finished second to Carelli in the last race at Tenino, Wash., and has led four of the six races. Defending champion Bill Sedgwick of Granada Hills has won three races and is the points leader.

Hornaday drives a Pontiac in Southwest Tour races and a Chevrolet Lumina in Winston West competition.

“It’s hard to imagine, without doing it, how different this kind of racing is from Southwest Tour racing,” he said of the Cajon event. “These heavy cars (3,500 pounds) wear tires out fast, and that can mean that the handling will change as often as every 15 laps. As tires wear, the guy who was faster than you may get slower and vice versa.

“Cajon is one of the smallest tracks we run, but it has long straightaways that make braking more important than usual, if you want to stay out of trouble. This is the first year we’ve used radial tires, and that poses a problem for everyone because they don’t seem to be as forgiving as bias tires on the heavier cars.”

Southwest Tour cars weigh only 2,900 pounds and have a 3 1/2-inch wider tread width, but put out nearly 200 less horsepower.

Carelli, who won the last two tour races at Cajon, agrees that the added power of the heavier Winston West cars will make them difficult to handle on the three-eights-mile paved oval.

“It’s going to be tough to get 3,500-pound cars around the track,” Carelli said. “The Cup cars have so much more power, it’s hard to hook them up down low, so it’s going to be challenging to try to see what lane to get in order to pass.”

This will be the first Winston West race at the suburban San Diego track since 1974, but Hornaday has driven there four times recently in the lighter cars.

“It’s fair to say that the track owes me a good finish,” Hornaday said. “My best so far is a fourth last March. The other three times I had flat tires. I’d never won at Stockton, either, before last week’s race.”

Hornaday’s victory last week, his second of the tour season, moved him to the top of the standings with 1,703 points, ahead of Doug George of Atwater, with 1,693, and Carelli, the series champion, with 1,656.

Between races, and to help pay the racing bills, Hornaday owns an auto repair shop in Newhall and recently went into partnership with veteran racer Dan Press to build Southwest Tour cars in Saugus.

He is also a former Saugus Speedway champion, and his father, Ron Sr., won the Pacific Coast Late Model series in 1963-64 before it became known as the Winston West.

Motor Racing Notes

SPEEDWAY BIKES--Glen Helen Park in San Bernardino will hold its qualifying program next Wednesday night for the U.S. Nationals, scheduled Oct. 3 at Costa Mesa. Glen Helen will be the third in a series at six tracks to determine 14 of the 16 starters in the nationals. The other two will be American riders from the British League. . . . Bart Bast, the No. 1 rider in Northern California, will be at Lake Perris Speedway tonight to tune up for that track’s national qualifier next week. . . . New Zealand sidecars and dirt track skateboarding will be part of Friday night’s program at Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. . . . Ron Correy of Fullerton placed fifth in a semifinal round of the world championship last Sunday at Bradford, England, to qualify for the World Final on Aug. 29 in Poland. Sam Ermolenko of Cypress and Rick Miller of Reseda will be in the other semifinal Saturday in Wiener-Neustadt, Germany.

STOCK CARS--Sportsman cars of the Winston Racing Series will headline Saturday night programs at Saugus Speedway and Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino. . . . Late models will be featured Saturday night at Santa Maria Speedway and Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale.

MISCELLANY--The Southern California Pro Gas Assn. will hold its fifth event in a seven-race series Saturday night at Bakersfield Raceway. . . . The Willow Springs Motorcycle Club will conduct a series of sprint races Sunday at Willow Springs Raceway.

MEMORABILIA--Western Racing Assn. midget race cars from the 1940s and ‘50s will be on display Sunday at the San Diego Automotive Museum’s summer car show series. Included will be a Kurtis Offy owned by Bob Hanson of Hacienda Heights once driven by Cal Niday, and a 1958 Moss quarter-midget owned by Bob Mastroleo of Monrovia. . . . A.J. Foyt will auction much of his racing collection this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. On the block will be the 1977 Coyote in which he won his fourth Indy 500, the 1964 Lotus that had the pole for the 1965 Indy 500, the Kurtis Kraft midget he and Parnelli Jones raced in the 1950s and ‘60s, and a 1992 Chevrolet Lumina he had built to drive in the Winston Cup series, but which has never been raced.