MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : Home, Hearth Not in Holiday for McSpadden

In Arizona they call him “the Tempe Tornado.”

In the California Racing Assn., they call him champion.

In the open-wheel racing world of midgets, sprint cars and Silver Crown dirt cars, they call Lealand McSpadden one of the busiest and best drivers in the country.

And this holiday weekend will be a particularly busy one for McSpadden, 45. He will drive his midget racer tonight in the 52nd Turkey Night Grand Prix at Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale, Calif.; Friday night in an open show at Yuma, Ariz., and Saturday night in the final United States Auto Club race of the year at the Imperial Raceway, near El Centro.

Tonight’s will be his first Turkey Night race in more than 10 years. Traditionally, Thanksgiving weekend in the McSpadden household has been a time for the family--wife Janet, son Jeff and daughter Michelle--to unwind from a long racing season by playing on the sand dunes around Glamis, Calif., in the Colorado Desert.

“Janet is recovering from an operation and isn’t up for tooling around on an ATV, so she said I ought to run the midget at Oildale,” McSpadden said. “I’m looking forward to it. I’ve had good luck with the midgets this season. I’ve won six races out of eight or 10 I’ve run.”

A victory in the Turkey Night race would give McSpadden midget racing’s first triple crown. He won the Belleville Nationals--the Indy 500 of midget racing--in Kansas and the indoor Tulsa Chili Bowl in Oklahoma.

McSpadden, a machine shop foreman in Tempe, Ariz., between races, doesn’t even own a race car. He has been driving a midget for Andy Bondio of Los Angeles for the last two years, and he won his first CRA sprint car championship driving for Frank Lewis of Huntington Beach.

In Silver Crown dirt-car racing, he won the Hulman Hundred the night before the Indy 500 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. Silver Crown cars are oversized sprint cars, similar to the Indy 500 cars of the 1950s.

“I think it’s an advantage for a sprint car driver to run against the midget regulars in a race like Turkey Night, because we run more races and are more aggressive because we’re used to more horsepower,” McSpadden said. “For instance, at Belleville, the first three were all sprint car guys--myself, Richard Griffin and Tommy Estes Jr.”

Griffin, a CRA regular from Silver City, N.M., and Estes, from Tulsa, also are entered in tonight’s 100-lap race on the third-mile Oildale oval. The midget drivers will be led by Stevie Reeves, newly crowned USAC champion, and Sleepy Tripp, seven-time Western Regional champion.

“Oildale’s a nice track now, after they widened it and moved the back straight out about 60 feet,” McSpadden said. “It made the corners wider, and there’s a lot more room to pass. You can actually race through the corners now.”

This will be the first time Bakersfield Speedway has been the site of the Turkey Night GP, which was left homeless when Ascot Park closed two years ago. It was run at Saugus Speedway last year, but when several drivers complained about having to race on pavement instead of the traditional dirt, promoters Cary Agajanian and Ben Foote moved the race.

Stan Fox, a two-time Belleville Nationals winner from Janesville, Wis., is defending champion. He won the finale at Ascot in 1990 and last year at Saugus.

McSpadden has found success at Bakersfield Speedway. Last week, in the Dave Sanborn Classic for CRA sprint cars, he won main events there Friday and Saturday nights for his 12th and 13th victories this season. Even though he has been racing and winning for nearly 25 years, the CRA championship is his first of any kind.

“I just never raced for championships,” he said. “I always look for the big races--especially the doubleheader shows where midgets and sprint cars run the same night.”

McSpadden won both ends of a midget-sprint car program twice this year, first at Yuma and later at Manzanita Raceway in Phoenix.

“It keeps you pretty busy,” McSpadden said of running two cars the same night. “You hot-lap one, then come in and go right out to hot-lap the other one. Then you qualify one, then the other. Then you run one heat race, then another, back and forth all night, in and out of one car or the other, until the last main event ends. It’s a lot of fun, though.”

Not winning championships doesn’t bother him. He won more CRA races than the champion in three of the five years before this season, and even this year he didn’t run all the races.

“I missed seven CRA shows this year and might not have won the championship if (Ron) Shuman hadn’t missed the swing through Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana,” McSpadden said. “I won three of those races when Shoe wasn’t getting any points at all.”

Shuman, also from Tempe, finished second to McSpadden in last Saturday night’s 50-lap feature at Oildale. He is also a six-time Turkey Night winner from the Ascot days and will be racing tonight in Skip Schuck’s car.

The last two scheduled CRA races--Sunday and Dec. 6 at Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield--have been canceled.

Motor Racing Notes

DRIVER OF THE YEAR--Bobby Rahal, the PPG Cup Indy car champion, was named American driver of the year in one of the closest contests in the 26-year history of the award. He was followed by NASCAR drivers Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki, the Winston Cup champion. Also in contention were Indy car driver Michael Andretti, drag racers Joe Amato and Cruz Pedregon, sports car champion Juan Fangio II, World of Outlaws sprint car champion Steve Kinser and NASCAR’s Bill Elliott.

MOTORCYCLES--Scott Russell, national Superbike and 750cc road-racing champion, was named American Motorcyclist Assn.’s professional athlete of the year at the AMA banquet last Saturday night in San Pedro. Kawasaki’s Jeff Ward, who is retiring after a long motocross career, was given a sportsman-of-the-year award. . . . Suzuki’s Guy Cooper is the winner of the Mickey Thompson Award of Excellence for Supercross riders.

INDY CARS--Several long-rumored driver assignments for 1993 have been announced: Robby Gordon will drive for A.J. Foyt in a Ford-powered Lola and Roberto Guerrero for Kenny Bernstein and Teo Fabi for Jim Hall in Chevy-powered Lolas. Bernstein also will have two other drivers, one of which probably will be Jim Crawford for the Indianapolis 500 only.

DRAG RACING--Sportsman drag racers will compete Friday through Sunday at Bakersfield Raceway in the Budweiser Pacific E.T. championships. . . . The Nostalgia Drag Racing Assn. will conclude its season Friday and Saturday at the L.A. County Raceway in Palmdale.

MISCELLANY--The annual Sports Car Club of America enduro is scheduled this weekend at Willow Springs Raceway. . . . Ron Hornaday Jr. of Palmdale will be feted as the NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour champion Saturday night in an awards banquet at the Burbank Airport Hilton. . . . Jeff and John Courts of Glendale drove a Honda ATV to a class victory in the Baja 1000.