Old Ascot Shows Up at New Perris Facility
Dirt track racing, Ascot style, will return to Southern California on Saturday night with the opening of Perris Auto Speedway, a half-mile oval track in Riverside County.
The Sprint Car Racing Assn. will showcase its non-winged machines at the inaugural event in the 8,000-seat stadium built on the Lake Perris Fairgrounds. The SCRA, and its predecessor, the California Racing Assn., has been without a home base since Ascot Park closed in 1990.
Drivers and car owners on hand for a trial run Wednesday were unanimous in their approval of the facility, the first dirt track built in the area since 1971.
“It’s the finest short-track facility in the country,” said Ron Shuman, a four-time SCRA champion from Tempe, Ariz., who has raced on most of the tracks from Pennsylvania to Perris. “The fans will love it, especially when it’s crowded, because there are more rest rooms that I’ve ever seen at a racetrack.
“The track itself is kind of like Ascot--tight in the corners with long straightaways. It’s a gigantic shot in the arm for sprint cars, for all types of racing in fact, because it will give Southern California race fans a place to go regularly, the way Ascot did.”
Saturday night’s 30-lap main event will be the first of 18 SCRA races at Perris. Various weekly shows will also feature U.S. Auto Club midgets, Arizona winged sprints, AMA motorcycles, IMCA stock cars, dwarf cars and mini- sprints.
Billy Boat, USAC western regional midget champion from Phoenix and the winner of this year’s SCRA opener, heads the entry list along with Shuman, who narrowly missed winning his fifth title last year. Lealand McSpadden, the 1995 champion, has retired.
Boat was the dominant midget car racer in the country last year, winning 18 races, including the Belleville Nationals in Kansas and the 100-lap Turkey Night Grand Prix at Bakersfield Speedway. He also won the midget main event at the Copper World Classic at Phoenix International Raceway in January.
Richard Griffin of Silver City, N.M., is the SCRA leader, with 136 points after two races, followed by Troy Cline of Hawthorne with 122. Both are expected to race Saturday night, as is J.J. Yeley of Phoenix, sprint car rookie of the year in 1994.
Eric Wilkins of Peoria, Ariz., who won last Saturday night’s SCRA feature at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix, is not entered.
“We’re committed to bringing back big-time, half-mile dirt-track sprint-car competition in a higher level of professionalism,” said Danny Kazarian, president of Oval Entertainment, the track’s operating company.
Parnelli Jones, 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner and a product of CRA racing at Ascot, will drive the pace car on opening night. Director of competition is another CRA product, Bubby Jones.
Although the project did not begin until Jan. 15, an administration building, 8,000 seats, 15 light standards, an electronic scoreboard, crash wall and a track surface that includes 10,000 cubic yards of specially screened clay are in place for the inaugural.
The track is two miles east of Interstate 215 at the intersection of Ramona Expressway and Lake Perris Drive.
Motor Racing Notes
STOCK CARS--Cajon Speedway will begin its 36th season Saturday night with a NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour race for late model cars. Twenty-four cars will race 100 laps around the three-eighths-mile paved oval. Craig Raudman, who won the Cajon 100 last year, will be back to defend his title in the role of series leader. The Redding driver has a 40-point lead over his brother, Chris. . . . Figure 8s and train races will open Kern County Raceway’s season Saturday night. . . . Street stocks and IMCA sprints will share billing Saturday night at Ventura Raceway. . . . Racing will return to Blythe Speedway Saturday night.
MISCELLANY--The seventh Goodguys Spring Nationals for custom cars and hot rods will take place Saturday and Sunday at the Pomona Fairplex. . . . The 10th annual Sunstar Sprockets Spring Classic motocross nationals will be held Sunday at Quail Canyon, in the Hungry Valley vehicle park near Gorman, halfway between Los Angeles and Bakersfield.
NECROLOGY--A public memorial service for racing promoter and publicist Ben Foote will be at 1 p.m. Friday in the Neighborhood Church, 415 Paseo Del Mar in Palos Verdes Estates. The date was incorrect in The Times last week.