Top Sprint Car Drivers Will Meet in Perris

Rip Williams has won a record 12 Sprint Car Racing Assn. main events this season, but the win he wants most is Saturday night in the $40,000 Oval Nationals, an open-competition race for wingless sprint cars at Perris Auto Speedway.

“This has been my best season yet, but it would be even more satisfying if I could win with a couple of extra guys in there,” Williams, 40, said. “I’m looking forward to matching my car and my talents against drivers like Jack Hewitt and Jimmy Sills and see how I do.”

In addition to the SCRA regulars, including points leader Richard Griffin and perennial favorite Ron Shuman, the entry list includes Hewitt, perhaps America’s most versatile and popular oval-track racer, and Sills, two-time U.S. Auto Club Silver Crown champion from Placerville.

“I’m bringing everything--my sprint car, midget and Silver Crown car--to do some racing out West and some fishing too,” said Hewitt, 45, of Troy, Ohio. “I hear there’s some good fishing in that little lake out back of the Perris track.”

Then there’s the money. The winner’s share of the two-day event will be $10,000, contrasted with $2,500 for winning an SCRA race. The Oval Nationals start Friday night with two 20-lap races to qualify drivers for Saturday night’s 40-lap main event.

Several of the drivers, including Williams, Hewitt and Sills, will also compete Sunday in a USAC Silver Crown race at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, on the one-mile horse racing track. It will be the first automobile race on the track since 1949, when Rex Mays was killed in an Indy car race.

“The difference between racing a sprint car and a Silver Crown car is like the difference between checkers and chess,” Williams said. “In a sprinter, everything is reaction; in a Silver Crown, it takes more planning, more setting up moves.” A Silver Crown car is bigger and slightly longer than a sprint car, and the races are all 100 miles on a one-mile oval.

Williams’ SCRA win last Saturday night in Ventura was his 12th, equaling Shuman’s single-season record. It gave car owner Sharon Jory the owner’s record, one more than Ann Wilkerson, owner of Shuman’s car. One of Shuman’s wins was in another car.

“Six of my wins came at Perris, and I figured I had things all sorted out [for the Oval Nationals], and then Bubby [Jones] put in all new clay on the track and everybody has to learn the new surface,” Williams said. Jones, a former sprint car champion, is director of competition at Perris.

Williams’ No. 3 sprint car is a Stinger chassis built by Richard Harvey in Hanford and powered by a 750 horsepower, all aluminum Donovan engine built by Ralph Tracy in Long Beach.

Racing is Williams’ hobby. He lives in Yorba Linda and works 50 hours a week for a plastic molding company in Corona.

“We work on the car every night before we load things up on Thursday or Friday, take off with the rig for a race somewhere, race Saturday night, drive home, wash the car and get ready to start all over again. That’s been our routine for nearly 20 years.

“My wife, Becky, she’s Bubby Jones’ sister, raises our three boys. They’re 7, 6 and 9 months, and the whole family’s at all my races. It’s a family deal.”

Motor Racing Notes

DRAG RACING--Gary Scelzi, 26, of Fresno, will replace the late Blaine Johnson as driver of the Johnson family’s top fuel dragster. Scelzi is the Pacific Division top alcohol dragster champion. Alan Johnson, Blaine’s brother, will remain as team owner and crew chief. Blaine Johnson, who led the National Hot Rod Assn. top fuel standings at the time of of his death, was killed Aug. 31 while qualifying for the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis.

When Kenny Bernstein became the first driver in NHRA history to have won a top fuel and a funny car title last weekend, he ran 318.69 mph, fastest in NHRA history. It won’t count as a record, however, because he didn’t back it up with another run within 1%, as required by NHRA rules. Bernstein won four consecutive funny car titles between 1985 and 1988. . . . Al Swindahl, who designed and built championship top fuel dragsters for Shirley Muldowney, Joe Amato, Eddie Hill and Bernstein, has sold his chassis building business to David Jeffers of Puyallup, Wash.

INDY CARS--Jim Hall has retired as a car owner, but his team will carry on. Gerald Davis, former team manager for Hall Racing, and Murray S. Craig, a Canadian businessman, have formed a partnership to operate Davis-Craig Racing. Their driver will be rookie Gualter Salles, 27, of Brazil.

LAND SPEED--Craig Breedlove and his five-wheeled, jet-powered Spirit of America are expected to arrive at Nevada’s Black Lake Desert on Saturday, with low-speed trial runs planned for Monday. If all goes well, Breedlove plans an attempt to break the land speed record of 633.468 mph later in the week. After finding the Bonneville Salt Flats unsatisfactory for a record attempt, Breedlove choose the 11-mile course north of Reno where Britain’s Richard Noble set the record in 1983.

NECROLOGY--Eddie Kuzma, who built J.C. Agajanian’s No. 98 that won the 1952 Indianapolis 500 with Troy Ruttman driving, died Saturday in Tigard, Ore. He was 85. Kuzma’s shop on South Budlong Avenue in Los Angeles also produced many Indy cars, including the Dean Van Lines Special that finished second in the 1954 Indy 500 and won 20 national championship races, mostly driven by Jimmy Bryan.