Looking to Add to His Track Record : Taste of Indy 500 Left El Segundo’s Morton Asking for More

John Morton, who for the past 30 years has driven high-tech, expensive race cars for a living, drives a beat-up 1972 Datsun pickup truck when he’s not getting paid to be behind the wheel.

Morton, 51, winner of The Times Grand Prix in 1985 and 1987, said he has a practical reason for driving such a low-profile vehicle around Southern California.

“It keeps me from getting carjacked,” he said.

Although Morton, an El Segundo resident, concentrates mainly on road racing at this stage in his career, he did attempt to fulfill a longtime goal and qualify a car in this year’s Indianapolis 500.

Morton and some associates raised $30,000 in an attempt to qualify at Indy. He passed his rookie driving tests easily, but was unable to make the starting grid of 33 for the race. Still, it was an exciting month of May for Morton, who hadn’t been to the Indianapolis track since 1963.

Entering the speedway as a competitor was a unique experience for the veteran driver.

“It was totally different,” he said. “I equate it to the same thrill that a football player must get when he walks on the field before the Super Bowl. There’s a special aura that you have to deal with. (Racing at Indianapolis) is the absolute pinnacle of what you do.”

Morton said that the high speeds reached at Indy aren’t what makes the race so special and so intimidating for many drivers.

“It isn’t a horribly difficult thing to do, to drive around the track fast,” he said. “But because the track is so steeply banked, if you lose control, you’re going to hit the wall. The nature of the track is different from a Daytona or a Talladega, where the turns are flatter. The curves at Indy are not really turns, but more corners.”

Although driving fast around the track may not be horribly difficult, funding a month at the speedway can be a monstrous task. According to Morton, Indy cars cost around $500,000, without the engine. Most engines are leased, Morton said.

A friend of Morton’s, Dominic Dobson, leased an engine for $50,000. The engine was used for 500 miles, then returned to the owner, who leased the Dobson team another $50,000 engine. Dobson qualified for the race on the outside of the ninth row and finished 23rd.

“If you run 1,500 miles,” said Morton, who figured he accumulated about 300 miles in his attempt to qualify, “you’ve spent $150,000, and at the end you don’t own the engine. You rack up the miles because you are going so damn fast.”

Although Morton didn’t make the race, it wasn’t because of lack of skill, according to car designer and promoter Peter Brock.

“John has an incredible amount of talent,” said Brock, who worked with Morton at the Carroll Shelby driving school in the 1960s. “He’s the perfect driver for Indy because he is so sensitive to the materials. Some drivers, if it takes destroying a car to win a race, they’ll do it. John has built and worked on the cars, and this helps him to keep things together better because he understands the car.”

Brock ran the Datsun racing operation in the early 1970s. In 1971, Morton was selected the California Sports Car Club driver of the year and the Datsun driver of the year. In 1971 and 1972, Morton was the top driver for the El Segundo-based Brock Racing Enterprises team that won a national championship.

Morton and the Brock team were the subjects of a book written by Sylvia Wilkinson, “The Stainless Steel Carrot,” that chronicled their 1972 racing season.

Wilkinson, who now lives with Morton, said Morton hopes for another shot at qualifying at Indy.

“He never quits,” she said. “John’s a dreamer. He was so up all month (during Indianapolis qualifying). He just loved being there.”

Car designer Shelby, who employs Morton as a test driver, remembers when Morton came to work for him 30 years ago.

“He’s very special to me,” Shelby said. “He came to work for us as a kid sweeping floors. We used to look around the corner and see him sitting in the race cars, imagining he was driving.”

Morton occasionally drives for the Cunningham racing team, also based in El Segundo. Morton was part of the Cunningham team that won a 12-hour endurance race at Sebring, Fla., and finished third in a 24-hour race at Daytona earlier this year.

Clayton Cunningham said Morton was the reason Cunningham became a race car owner.

In 1977, Morton parked his pickup truck on top of a hill and left the transmission in gear. The parking brake wasn’t working and the truck rolled down the hill and slammed into Cunningham’s Mazda sports car.

The Mazda was too badly damaged to be street-legal, so Cunningham, a car mechanic until the fateful accident, decided to salvage the vehicle by turning it into a race car. He’s been a race car owner ever since.

“John is a very, very talented individual,” Cunningham said. “He just doesn’t have an aggressive personality and this hurts him at times.”

Shelby said he wants Morton to work for him again as a test driver.

“John is a good driver, and an excellent test driver,” Shelby said. “He has a dry wit and an ability to laugh at himself, which is rare among drivers, so many of (whom) are ego-heads.”

During his 31 years in California, Morton, who grew up in Illinois, has raced on all types of tracks and in all types of conditions. He has seen Southern California go from an area with tracks in Ontario,Riverside and at Ascot Park in Gardena to one of few racing venues.

Morton, who bought his own sprint car and raced at Ascot in 1973-74, was dismayed at the closing of the track a few years ago.

“We’ll never have another Ascot,” he said. “Because it was located in a population center, the land just got too valuable. There has never been a time when there wasn’t a good dirt oval in the area. You used to get guys like me who could buy a car, tow it the seven miles from their house to the track, and then race it. It’s a bygone era.”

Although Morton didn’t envision himself racing competitively after his 50th birthday, he feels the excitement when he gets behind the wheel.

“I’ve never wished that I didn’t race,” he said. ‘My job is play. Don’t tell my employers this, but I get paid to do what I’d pay somebody to let me do; paid to do my hobby.”