MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : No Turkey, Shuman Eyes Victory No. 8

Ron Shuman has won the Turkey Night Midget Grand Prix seven times, and he can’t wait to try for No. 8.

No other driver has won more than twice in the 52 years the Thanksgiving night race has been a fixture on the U.S. Auto Club’s midget car racing schedule. A.J. Foyt won it twice. So did Parnelli Jones. Mel Kenyon, the winningest midget driver in history, won it twice in 25 tries.

Sleepy Tripp, USAC western regional champion seven times and national champion twice, has driven in 17 Turkey Night races and has yet to win.

Shuman, 41, perhaps the best open-wheel driver on the West Coast, will face one of the strongest fields ever assembled when this year’s 100-lap race is run next Thursday at Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale.

“I feel pretty good about going back to Bakersfield,” Shuman said from his home in Tempe, Ariz. “I won two races there this year in my sprint car and I have good thoughts from last year’s race, when I won from the ninth row.

“I’ll be in the same car that I’ve been driving for Skip Shuck of Camarillo since 1989. It took some unusual circumstances for me to win--a couple of crashes took some of the front guys out--but I think what helped me most was that the racetrack was rough and a lot of guys don’t like that. I got through the rough stuff just fine. The track fit my style.”

Shuman first won the Turkey Night race at Ascot Park in 1979 and monopolized it by winning four in a row, then came back to win again in 1984 and 1987, all at Ascot. When the track was closed after the 1990 race, the race was held one year at Saugus Speedway on the asphalt before returning to its traditional dirt surface at Bakersfield, although that is only a quarter-mile oval.

“When we first talked about running at Bakersfield, everyone said it was too small, but we found a way around it,” Shuman said. “They’re saying the same thing about Ventura, but I expect we’ll be running there regularly in sprint cars next year as well as midgets.”

Shuman, who normally does not run for series championships, preferring to move around the country from one rich race to another, came within two controversial points of winning his first USAC championship this year in the Silver Crown dirt-car series.

Mike Bliss was declared champion after the final race at Sacramento, but only after Kenny Irwin had been penalized one position for jumping a restart during the race. The penalty moved Bliss up from fifth to fourth and the point difference also moved him past Shuman for the championship.

“When the checkered flag fell, I was the champion,” Shuman said. “But then USAC said, ‘Wait a minute.’ It’s highly unusual to penalize a driver after the fact. Most times, it’s done during the race with a black flag.”

Shuman finished seventh at Sacramento after winning a Silver Crown race at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.

“It was like ‘82, when I went into the last Silver Crown race leading and came out losing,” Shuman said.

Page Jones of Rolling Hills, winner of the Belleville Nationals--the Indy 500 of midget racing--will be one of the major challengers to Shuman. He will drive the same Larry Howard car that won at Belleville.

Stan Fox of Janesville, Wis., who won the Turkey Night finale at Ascot on the dirt and then repeated at Saugus on pavement, will lead a contingent of drivers from the Midwest that includes 1992 USAC midget champion Stevie Reeves of Speedway, Ind., and World of Outlaw veterans Dave Blaney of Cortland, Ohio, and Joe Gaerte of Rochester, Ind.

The West Coast will be represented by Bliss of Milwaukie, Ore., the new Silver Crown champion; Richard Griffin of Silver City, N.M., runner-up to Jones at Belleville; Jimmy Sills of Placerville, Calif., 1990 Silver Crown champion and winner of the Sacramento dirt-car race last month; Brent Kaeding of Campbell, Calif., the Northern California sprint car champion and a former Turkey Night winner, and local favorites Tripp of Costa Mesa and Robby Flock of Temecula.