Unser Has a Six-Pack at Long Beach After Another Grand Prix Victory : Auto racing: He continues domination on streets as familiar to him as those in Albuquerque, N.M.

It doesn’t seem to matter what happens when the Indy cars come to the streets of Long Beach. The result is almost always the same--Al Unser Jr. wins.

Six times in the last eight years the second-generation champion from Albuquerque, N.M., has celebrated the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach by swigging champagne while standing at the center of the winner’s podium.

When Unser first won, in 1988, he was Little Al, son of four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser. Little Al won by more than a lap that year. Since then, he has shed the Little, but kept winning.

In Sunday’s 21st Grand Prix, he survived harrowing contact with rookie Gil DeFerran in the narrow third turn early in the race and then held off desperate challenges from pole-sitter Michael Andretti to win by more than 23 seconds over Scott Pruett and Teo Fabi.

“Long Beach has been good to me,” Unser said. “Every time I pull my motor home into this place, I try to take the same roads, hit the same stoplights and hope everything works out the way it did the year before. I’m just always glad to see the place.”

With 20 of the 105 laps run under yellow caution flags, Unser’s Penske-Mercedes averaged only 91.442 m.p.h. around the 1.59-mile circuit, but one unexpected incident after another kept the 85,000 fans on edge for the entire race.

The first came when Unser, in fourth, tried to squeeze between third-place DeFerran and the wall on the fifth lap.

“When we went into the first turn, I got underneath him, but he came right around the corner with me,” Unser said. “Going through the second turn, I was up high and he tried to squeeze me. I got pinched against the wall, as far up as I could go. We locked wheels and I was worried about the front end, but it came out OK.”

Ten laps later, DeFerran was the victim of some over-aggressive driving by Paul Tracy in a race for third place behind Andretti and Unser. DeFerran, who had qualified third in only his fourth Indy car race, passed Tracy and pulled ahead, only to have Tracy run into his rear end, spinning both cars into the third turn wall.

“I had just passed him in traffic, and I saw he had come up beside me,” DeFerran said. “It was in a particularly narrow place on the track, and I knew there was no room for two of us. We came together, and I bounced off into the tire wall. It was a very regrettable racing accident.”

With two of the first four cars out of the race by the 12th lap, the race settled down to a duel between Andretti and Unser.

When they pitted, Fabi and Pruett chose to stay on the track and take over the lead.

On Lap 24, Unser caught Andretti while lapping slower cars coming off a caution flag restart and moved into third place. When Fabi and Pruett pitted five laps later, Unser was in front, where he stayed for 74 of the final 76 laps.

Andretti, whose Lola-Ford Cosworth had been the dominant car throughout practice and qualifying, closed behind Unser on Lap 55 and made a futile effort to get past him. Instead, Andretti ended up in the runoff area, dropping back to sixth place before getting back on the track.

“We were in traffic and Michael tried to pass me on the left,” Unser said. “I was on the inside. When I braked and he went a car length farther in the corner than I did, I thought, ‘This is really going to be exciting.’ Then Michael went into the runoff area.”

Andretti worked his way back up to second place and again challenged Unser--and again wound up with his brakes locked in the runoff area on Turn 6. This time he dropped back to ninth place.

Unser was 22 seconds in front and pulling away, but behind him a flurry of incidents occurred.

Rookie Christian Fittipaldi, Emerson Fittipaldi’s nephew from Brazil, was headed for a second-place finish when his car slowed to a stop on the course. Then Eddie Cheever, driving for A.J. Foyt, was second, closely followed by Fabi and Pruett.

Fabi dropped to fourth place when he was penalized for passing Cheever in front of a waving yellow flag, but Cheever ran out of fuel halfway through the final lap, moving Pruett to second and Fabi to third.

Pruett took over the PPG Cup lead after four races with 46 points. Maurice Gugelmin, who finished fifth, is second with 38, followed by Unser with 34.

* LUCK OF THE ANDRETTIS: Michael, apparently inheriting the curse from father Mario, fades to a ninth-place finish. C8