Saugus Speedway Stock Cars on Fast Track : Racetrack has survived for over 50 years, even as bigger, better-known tracks have gone by the wayside.

Saugus Speedway isn’t exactly the jewel of auto racing. A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti never raced here. The drivers in Saturday night stock-car races are mostly hobbyists who have long given up any dreams of becoming the next Richard Petty.

The winners get a purse that barely covers their cost of replacing a set of tires. And the track’s mostly local fans sit on rickety benches that are said to have more historic value than comfort.

Yet this racetrack in the Santa Clarita Valley has survived--and largely prospered--for more than 50 years. It is Los Angeles County’s only remaining speedway, having outlasted many bigger and well-known facilities in the Southland, including Ascot Park in Gardena and Riverside International Raceway.

And its business has grown in recent years, thanks to greater television exposure of motor racing, a savvy race promoter who has filled the grandstands with more women and children by adding offbeat shows--like demolition derbies--while cutting the winner’s purses, and relying on a booming population in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Racing at Saugus Speedway is from late March to September, on Saturdays nights, over a one-third-mile asphalt oval track. This year, Saugus Speedway’s audience is averaging 4,200 fans, up from about 2,800 five years ago.

“Saugus is one of the top 10 tracks of its kind in the country, in attendance and probably in profit,” said Brian France, vice president of marketing for the National Assn. for Stock Car Auto Racing. NASCAR is the major stock car sanctioning organization, and Saugus Speedway joined it in 1986 to get the benefits of its Winston West tour and other promotions.

Stock cars that race at Saugus look like regular passenger cars, with Ford Thunderbirds and Chevy Camaros particularly popular. But inside the car are supercharged, 8-cylinder, 500-horsepower engines, with custom chassis that can go 150 m.p.h. and can be deafening to the race fan.

But Saugus Speedway’s longevity probably has a lot to do with the land that it is on. Ascot, Riverside and a host of other tracks in Southern California were closed by landowners who saw more profitable uses for the land. By contrast, the Saugus Speedway’s owner, the Bonelli family, have declined offers to sell the site for commercial development, real estate executives said.

The Saugus site was bought by William Bonelli in the late 1930s when the facility was a rodeo arena. According to property tax records, the 40-acre site has an assessed value this year of about $550,000. Commercial developers, however, say the land could probably be sold today for $20 million.

William Bonelli’s son, Benjamin, is president of Rodeo Land Co., which technically owns the Saugus Speedway property. Benjamin Bonelli, who lives in the Bay Area, declined to be interviewed, as did other members of the Bonelli family, including his brother Robert, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz. The Bonelli family, which also owns Santa Clarita Water Co., leaves the track’s operations to Ray Wilkings, the speedway’s promoter and general manager.

Wilkings, 40, declined to provide any financial figures for the racetrack. But looking over the track’s average attendance, plus its swap meets, the Saugus Speedway probably grosses more than $3.5 million a year.

Based on average attendance figures--with 2,500 adults paying $8 per ticket, plus 1,000 children, ages 6-11, at $3 tickets--plus the $15 to $20 mechanics and car crews are charged to get in the pits, plus programs and the markups for gas and tires sold to racers, the track figures to gross more than $1 million this year.

And since 1963, the track’s grounds have been converted on Sundays into a year-round swap meet. Based on a $1 fee for attendance--which averages between 15,000 and 18,000--and the rent of more than 900 spaces to vendors at $20 to $55 each, the swap meet would gross about $2.5 million.

That doesn’t include revenues from 20 concession stands, which are operated separately by Wilkings’ company, Olympic Concessions.

Although the swap meet may generate more money than racing does, observers say the Bonelli family is a big reason auto racing has survived at Saugus.

“They appreciate and enjoy motor racing,” said Cary Agajanian, a Universal City lawyer whose racing family operated the Ascot Park in Gardena until its lease expired in 1990 and the owner signed a deal with a commercial real estate developer.

Added Jim Naylor, operator of the Ventura Raceway, a 1/4-mile dirt track on the Ventura County Fairgrounds, “If it wasn’t in the canyon there and wasn’t owned by the Bonelli family, it probably would be gone too.”

Ventura Raceway and speedways in San Bernardino, El Cajon, Blythe and Bakersfield are the only other stock-car tracks left in Southern California. In all of California, there are 46 oval tracks in operation this year, down from a high of 60 in 1954, said Allan Brown, publisher of the National Speedway Directory. Most of these are in Northern California, and many run midget, or dune-buggy-size cars, than the 3,500-pound NASCAR vehicles.

Racing at Saugus Speedway began in 1939, before the track was paved. The track wasn’t always profitable, said Wilkings, who took over management of the track in 1985 upon the death of his father and former track promoter, Marshall Wilkings.

Ray Wilkings has made the racing business profitable partly by slashing the track’s biggest expense, the purse, or prizes, paid to drivers. On a typical night, the track pays a total of $8,000 in cash awards to drivers for various races--down from $16,000 a decade ago.

Though Saugus Speedway’s average purse is on par with other tracks its size--Cajon Speedway, for example, offers an average $7,000 a night--the decline in the last decade has put a bind on the drivers.

Dave Phipps, 45, of Simi Valley has been racing at Saugus since 1979. He has won the Sportsmen division championship three years, but now says he’s not sure how long he can afford to keep racing.

Phipps, who makes about $40,000 a year as a mechanic for the city of Los Angeles, says he spent $10,000 this year for a new car to race in a cheaper division because drivers in the Sportsmen class were spending tens of thousands of dollars to zap up their cars.

Phipps’ current race car is a 1970 Chevy Malibu frame, with the rest of the body customized by sheets of aluminum, and it can reach a top speed of 130 m.p.h. Phipps pays the track about $300 a night to race--including tires, gasoline and pit passes. If he wins, the winner’s share for his current division is $300.

“It doesn’t make sense financially. There’s no good reason for doing this,” he said “to win $300. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing it.”

Wilkings says the track can’t afford to pay the purses it did a decade ago. The soaring cost for insurance is a major expense, he said. Since the mid-1980s, Wilkings has also beefed up security; he now has a dozen off-duty police officers watching the grounds for rowdy fans.

The extra security has been part of Wilkings’ strategy to change the track’s crowd from a beer-guzzling scene for men to a family-entertainment center. Wilkings has also opened a family grandstand section, where alcohol is prohibited. To draw more children, he has added low purse races like a destruction derby, and the train race, where three cars linked together compete against other trains in a figure-eight pattern.

“Saugus has got a lot of gimmicky promotions,” said Brown, the directory publisher. “They’ll make good money and they don’t have to pay out a lot.”

But the core group that supports Saugus Speedway are the racers themselves and their sponsors. And it doesn’t hurt that Saugus Speedway is the only game in town.

Al Garrison, an owner of a Baskin-Robbins store in Torrance, would probably not be at Saugus every other week if Ascot Park were still open. Garrison drives from Palos Verdes to watch Gerry Mielke, also of Torrance, drive his white mini-stock Camaro emblazoned with a Baskin-Robbins logo on the side. Mielke used to race at Ascot, but when that track closed he and Garrison took their racing to Saugus.

Like the drivers, the sponsors don’t do it so much for economic gain as they do for the love of racing.

Mike and Pam Gilmore operate Corel Electronics, a security systems business in Van Nuys that has sponsored driver Dave Phipps by contributing about $1,500 a year. Business has been slow in the last few years, the Gilmores said.

“But when there’s any extra money, Dave’s the first consideration,” said Pam. “We go to the track every week, it’s like going to visit friends.”