Big Wheel : Wells’ Commitment to Building Racing Empire Will Be Evident This Weekend in Long Beach

He has been awake 45 minutes and driven here from his home in San Juan Capistrano. He’s in his second-floor office that looks out over four mechanics’ bays in his 19,000 square-foot facility that’s soon to expand toward an adjacent lot.

Cal Wells III is working the NordicTrak while watching race tapes in his office at Precision Preparation, Inc., a name that is more a way of life than just another letterhead logo.

He has more tapes than he can watch, but as a member of racing’s CART board of directors, there’s always something to be gleaned and filed away on one of his many lists. Racing strategy. Good commercials. Bad camera angles. Potential sponsors.

It’s 2:45 a.m. He had four hours of sleep the night before. His workday will end in a little more than 15 hours unless he has a business dinner. And this happens every day as Wells carries on the commitment to build a racing empire.

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The defining moment of Wells’ professional life was when he “decided commitment was more important than virtually anything” and opened a little shop in 1979 with a partner and an employee to build off-road racing trucks.

“It was a commitment to excellence in everything I do, the pursuit of perfection, personally and professionally,” he said. “[The company name, Precision Preparation] is a lifestyle, it’s a business style, it’s a commitment to being the best you can be, to being prepared and being precise.”

Eighty victories and 11 manufacturers’ championships later, Wells has been called the Roger Penske of off-road racing.

But his appetite has grown.

Wells, 41, is a CART Indy car team co-owner with Frank Arciero Sr., who formed Arciero-Wells Racing. PPI, which Wells owns, is the sole service provider to the two cars on the Arciero-Wells team--the MCI Toyota and the Panasonic Duskin Toyota--as well as two recently added Toyota Atlantic Championship Series cars. Not to mention Toyota’s off-road program.

Outside his building, perhaps nowhere are his fingerprints more prevalent than at this weekend’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, the CART World Series’ marquee event.

Not only is he running two Indy and two Toyota Atlantic cars, but PPI also built the pace cars, the CART safety trucks and 20 race cars for Saturday’s celebrity race. And Toyota--which supplies Wells’ power plant--is the primary sponsor.

“Cal hasn’t specifically said how much the race means to him, but Cal is a person you can read,” said rookie Max Papis, who will drive the MCI Toyota in Sunday’s main event. “I could see.”

The Grand Prix, the third event of the season, is only about a 12-minute drive from Wells’ office in Papis’ Reynard Toyota, about 45 minutes for everyone else. Toyota Racing Development, where the engines are assembled, is in Costa Mesa. Other sponsors’ headquarters are also nearby. The crush of guests in the hospitality tent will be unusually large with a more-than-passing interest in Wells’ success or failure.

“You’ve got the hometown crowd, and all the good and the bad [in the race] are going to show up equally as much,” Wells said. “That added pressure or focus is important--it keeps you on your toes.”

Wells is all about being on his toes and keeping others on theirs. He is demanding. Most people know where they stand with him. He can be hard when he should be and hard when he shouldn’t. He tries to be fair and lead by example. Admittedly, he has knee-jerk reactions and has difficulty giving up control.

His strength, he says, is in marshaling the resources that create a winning organization. That’s what he did in off-road racing, and the same principles--coupled with similar support from the sponsors--apply to CART, he says.

“He has a direction in mind that he wants to go and he makes sure it happens that way,” said Peter Miles, chief technician for the off-road racing program, who has been with Wells 11 years.

Wells is the king of voice mail, often leaving long, rambling messages at odd hours. He can’t E-mail because he can’t spell or type. He had dyslexia as a child, and an auto accident in 1974 gave him a depressed skull fracture and brain bruise that ended his racing career. He couldn’t even spell his name for a while during his 18-month recovery. “I’m not illiterate--I can read,” Wells said. “Everything’s fine, besides sawing off two years of my life and throwing it away.”

Yet he is an articulate man, and when he wins his first Indy-car race, he will probably express himself as well as anyone before him.

But that first victory probably won’t come Sunday.

“My expectations are somewhat limited for our champ [Indy championship] cars,” Wells said. “We’re still developing as a team. I’d be thrilled with a top-10 finish. I’d be very happy with a top 15. I’d really be very pleased if we finish the race.”

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Arciero-Wells is looking to be competitive in the MCI Toyota the last third of this 17-race season, about the time of the Miller 200 early August.

Wells, who is comfortable making sports and military analogies, calls his current Indy operation an expansion team going through growing pains. The new RV8B engine isn’t as competitive as the traditional powers in auto racing, but it shows promise. Wells expects to challenge for a top-five finish by the end of the season, be in position to win some races (and finish on the podium) in 1998 and challenge for the championship in 1999.

He is more optimistic about Toyota’s chances in Saturday’s Toyota Atlantic Championship race in Long Beach. Wells thinks Leo Parente and Jeret Schroeder can finish in the top five. “I don’t know if we’re prepared to win yet,” he said.

This is Parente and Schroeder’s second race for Wells.

Every off-road driver who has raced for Wells has won a race, including Ivan (Ironman) Stewart, Rod Millen, Steve Millen and Robby Gordon--who won nine driver’s championships between them.

This is the third year Wells and Arciero (who owns 51% of the Arciero-Wells partnership) have fielded an Indy-car team. Wells is convinced that Papis will win too, eventually.

Papis, 27, said Wells impressed him with his honesty and sensitivity when they first met.

“He told me, ‘It’s tough being here, we have a lot of work, we know that we’re going through a development program,’ ” Papis said. “He asked me, ‘Would you be ready to suffer with us and give us 110% to be a consistent winner? Are you ready to work hard with us . . . and make our team a successful one?’

“He was not selling small talk, he was selling reality, but with a great will to make everything very successful.”

He was selling the commitment and loyalty that make Wells wake up at 2 a.m. to go to work.

“[Commitment and loyalty] are the most important things in the world--they transcend everything,” Wells said. “Whatever makes your life what it is, without loyalty and commitment, it’s nothing. What is religion without commitment? What is love without commitment?”

What is a race team without commitment?

Papis joined San Clemente’s Hiro Matsushita, who drives the Panasonic Duskin Toyota, on the developmental highway. The reality is that Papis was brought on to replace Jeff Krosnoff, who was killed last year in a race in Toronto. The thought of Krosnoff’s death still makes Wells’ voice turn somber. And his commitment grow deeper.

Wells closed PPI for three weeks and brought in counselors for the 130 members of his extended family after Krosnoff’s death. And though it set the program back, it also strengthened it “more than any other single event could have.”

“The loss of Jeff as a development driver was very painful,” Wells said, “but I think the resolve and commitment by Toyota, PPI, Arciero-Wells--the whole team--was strengthened by it. You certainly don’t want to turn that tragedy into a waste.”