Racing With a View : Popular Ventura Raceway, Where the Surf Meets the Track, Is Area’s Fastest-Growing and Best-Nurtured Facility

Where else but at Ventura Raceway can a motor racing fan walk out the back gate between races and watch surfers riding waves?

The raceway, the Southland’s fastest-growing racing facility, is inside the Ventura County Fairgrounds--with the picturesque Sulphur Mountain forming a backdrop for the fair’s superstructure beyond the track. To the rear, near the parking lot and the pits, is Surfers Point Park and the beach.

Said Jimmy Sills, the 1990 United States Auto Club Silver Crown champion, after seeing it for the first time during a midget race: “Hey, this is a racy little place.”

Sleepy Tripp, many times national and regional midget car champion, said he always enjoys coming to Ventura Raceway because of the nice surroundings.

“And a driver can’t ask for better treatment than he gets from Jim Naylor,” Tripp added.

Naylor, a sign painter from Oxnard, and Cliff Morgan, a sixth-grade schoolteacher from Port Hueneme, keep the little dirt track operating--and growing.

Naylor has always been around racing. His father owned race cars and quarter-midget tracks and, when Jim was younger, he drove.

“I remember racing against Jim at his dad’s track in Camarillo,” Tripp recalled. “I think we were in quarter-midgets then. We were really young.”

Morgan was president of the Tom Sneva Fan Club, a position he held for many years, even before Sneva won the 1983 Indianapolis 500. He had met Sneva at a teachers’ convention when Sneva was still a school administrator in Washington.

Naylor and Morgan have made the raceway a family affair since Naylor leased it from the fair board July 4, 1978.

Naylor does the track preparation, sign painting and announcing and is the facility’s owner and promoter. His mother, Ann, answers the phones and does the secretarial work. Morgan writes and prints the program, handles public relations and is the general manager. His wife, Ginger, is the pit-gate manager; his son, Chris, is the race starter and flagman, and a daughter, Laura, is a scorer.

“There isn’t a full-time employee at the track,” Naylor said. “Cliff and I both have regular jobs, and so does everyone who works for us.”

The late Johnny Mantz first put racing into the Ventura Fairgrounds in the late 1960s, when he promoted speedway motorcycle racing. When Mantz was killed in a highway accident, longtime speedway promoter Harry Oxley took over briefly, keeping the track alive.

About that time, the Naylors were running TQ (three-quarter) midgets at the 605 Speedway in Irwindale, when that track was closed to make way for a brewery.

“I had a little money saved, so I bought the rights to run races here at the fairgrounds,” Naylor said. “The track then was only about a tenth-mile, just like Oxley’s track at Costa Mesa. My idea was to stretch it out just enough for TQs. When we opened, we ran speedway bikes on Tuesday nights and TQs on Friday.

“The next thing I wanted was full midgets and stock cars. I talked the fair people into knocking out a few buildings, moving a couple of barns and making enough room for a bigger track. It’s somewhere between a big fifth (of a mile) and a little quarter. That was enough to get us about 12 races a year from USAC and then we hit the jackpot last year with ESPN’s “Saturday Night Thunder.”

To make the track suitable for TV, Naylor had to build a TV tower, which he combined with a press box, and install new lighting. The tower cost $50,000 and the lights $30,000.

“All the improvements were mine,” Naylor said. “The fair board said I could do it if I spent my own money, so I did. It was close. We were pouring cement for the light standards on Thursday night and putting the lights up Friday for the first TV race the next night.”

The ESPN show not only gave Ventura Raceway national exposure, it also brought the top midget drivers in the country to race on the seaside track.

“It’s a real good midget track,” praised Ron Shuman, a seven-time winner of the Turkey Night midget race. “Being close to the ocean, (the clay track) stays damp and makes a good surface.”

Finding clay is one of Naylor’s most difficult tasks.

“It’s like mining,” he said. “You look for a vein of it and you dig it out. Most of it comes from river bottoms. It used to be easy to find, but now it’s also being used to seal off old dump sites, so we’re in competition for it.”

Because the track is part of the fairgrounds, the busiest week of the year was the week of the county fair. Fair goers got in free to watch stock cars and a destruction derby on Friday night; midgets, TQs and dwarf cars on Saturday night; a stadium motocross and off-road race on Sunday and a concert Tuesday afternoon with Tex Beneke and his orchestra and singer Frankie Laine.

“We were at the track 52 straight hours, getting the track ready for the races and then cleaning it up in time for the concert,” Naylor said. “I was on the tractor about a third of that time. We normally take two or three days to build up the motocross track and another couple of days to take it down, but for the fair we had to do it overnight both times.

“It takes about eight hours before each night’s racing to prepare the clay. You’ve got to dig it up and water it, then take dirt from the top and rip it up some more and then grade it. The banking is different for each type of race and so is the consistency of the clay.

“It was all worth it, though, when we filled every seat, including the temporary bleachers, every night during the fair.”

Naylor also has a fetish for cleanliness. There are no gum wrappers, plastic bags or soft drink cans around the track. After every race, the grandstand, pits and walkways are swept clean. Even the dirt clods are knocked off the fences.

“When someone walks into my track for the first time, I want it to be like walking into my living room,” Naylor said. “I want them to feel like they’re coming for a friendly visit. I want it that way for the drivers, the crews and the officials as well as all the paying customers.”

There are plans to expand the track even more to allow sprint cars to spin around in the clay.

“We tested it (in August) with half a dozen (California Racing Assn.) cars and all we need is just a little more space for a good show,” Naylor said. “We took over the midget trade left when Ascot Park closed, and now we’d like to have the sprint cars here, too. We’re going to have our first sprint car race (Nov. 13), and if it works, we’ll definitely look into it for 1994.”

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One of Naylor’s first promotions was a kart race. Parnelli Jones was there to watch his sons, P.J. and Page, who began their racing careers at Ventura.

“I’d been a big fan of Parnelli’s ever since I went to Gardena Stadium with my dad and watched Parnelli and A.J. Foyt and guys like that,” Naylor said. “I used to love it when they’d get in fights in the pits after the races.

“Well, one of Parnelli’s boys ran into the rear of A.J. Johnson’s kid and before you knew it, Parnelli was in the pits fighting with Johnson. It was like a couple of Little League dads going at it.”

Naylor raced for the phone. To call the police? No way. To call his father.

“‘Dad,’ I screamed at him, ‘I’ve got it made. My first night (as a promoter) and Parnelli and A.J. are fighting in my pits. Can you believe that? How much better can it get?’ At first, I didn’t tell him that A.J. was not Foyt, but Johnson, but I was damned excited about it.”

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The Huberts, Gary and Jan, of Somis, Calif., are typical of the family participation at Ventura.

Gary, 35, is a former short-course off-road racer who decided three years ago to build and race a Pinto mini-stock.

“A friend invited me to watch the races at Ventura one night, and after I’d seen about three laps, I knew I wanted to come back to race myself,” Hubert said. “I’d fabricated my off-road cars, so that wasn’t a problem. I built myself a Pinto. I did everything but the motor. That I bought.”

After cheering for her husband on the sidelines for a couple of years, Jan decided it looked like so much fun she wanted to try. Her father, Don Faut, had run modifieds at Ascot Park.

“When they started the pony-stock class this year, I knew it was for me,” Jan said. “Gary built me a little Pinto and in my first race, when I passed my first car, I thought it was the most exciting thing in the world. I never knew I could get so excited, but to tell the truth, it’s such a kick that I enjoy it no matter where I finish. Of course, winning is better.”

Jan Hubert scored an unusual double in August when she took the checkered flag in both the pony-stock and Figure 8 races. Gary won the mini-stock main event that night.

“Jan was so excited she was still talking about it at 4 o’clock in the morning,” her husband said. “I told her to shut up and go to sleep, but she kept talking. I finally gave up and slept on the couch.”

Pony and mini-stocks are entry-level racing. A car can be built for about $4,000 and race-ready engines are available at reasonable prices.

Says Gary Hubert, “You go just fast enough to have fun--without getting hurt.”

Gary, who won seven of the first nine mini-stock events this season, plans to move up another notch next year with a Camaro in street stock or perhaps an IMCA modified car.

“I want a little faster car,” he said.

Hubert works days for the Tapo Rock and Sand Co. in Simi Valley and works on the family’s racing cars at night.

“Whatever I drive, I’ll build it myself,” he said. “That’s part of the fun. That, and spending two or three nights a month at the race track with all your friends.”

Jan plans to remain another season in pony stock, which has attracted other female drivers.

“The women in pony stocks could be our big breakthrough,” Naylor said. “If enough women get involved in racing, especially as drivers, we can quit worrying about the guys spending too much time with their cars. We like to say we have a family atmosphere and having more women racers will make it even more so.”

Paul Moore, a two-time street-stock champion from Oak View, has his own opinion of women drivers.

“What’s all this hugging each other after a race?” he asked. “Can you see Gary and I and Bill Bartels hugging each other after a race like the women do? What’s racing coming to?”