Speedway Is a Dream Come True

Eight weeks from today, a new era in Southern California motor racing will be ushered in when the California Speedway, a two-mile banked oval, opens in Fontana on 475 acres of the old Kaiser steel mill property.

“If we had to, we could open today,” General Manager Les Richter said Thursday. “Everything of significance is done, only a few finishing touches remain.”

The opening race is the California 500 for NASCAR Winston Cup cars on Sunday, June 22. Also on the three-day racing weekend will be a 100-mile International Race of Champions and a 200-mile Winston West race on June 21. Drivers will practice and qualify June 20.

It will be the first Winston Cup race in Southern California since the closing of Riverside International Raceway in 1988 and

the first on a superspeedway here since Ontario Motor Speedway closed in 1980.

All 71,000 grandstand seats have been sold, except for a few thousand set aside for holders of personal seat licenses. PSLs, which go for $1,200, give the purchaser first claim to buy seats at each event for 20 years. If the seats are not bought, the PSL is canceled. The original PSL allotment was 12,000 seats, which will net Roger Penske’s Penske Motorsports Inc. a $14.4-million windfall if all are sold.

Also available are 8,000-10,000 infield tickets.

Only a few cars have tested the track, a replica of the Penske-owned Michigan Speedway in every way except the banking. Michigan has 18-degree banking in the turns, California 14 degrees.

A number of CART and NASCAR teams have requested dates to test, but Penske declined.

“When [CART driver] Paul Tracy was on the track in January, everything stopped,” Richter said. “Not a single bit of work was done while he drove and Roger didn’t want any more downtime for the workers, so he called off testing until next month.”

Winston Cup and Winston West teams have been invited to a three-day open practice May 5-7, after the Save Mart Supermarkets 300 on May 4 at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma. The test will be closed to the public.

Tracy, one of Penske’s drivers, surprised onlookers by hitting 217 mph in a shakedown designed more to check out the track than the Penske-Mercedes he was driving.

“We wanted to make sure there were no surprises on the track after the preliminary grading,” Richter said. “I don’t think anyone, Roger included, expected Tracy to do 217, but he made it look easy.”

Winston Cup drivers Ken Schrader and Bobby Hamilton conducted a tire test for four days last month, as did Dave Marcis and Jim Slauter in International Race of Champions cars.

“It exceeds my expectations,” said Hamilton, who drives the No. 43 Pontiac Grand Prix for Richard Petty. “Roger [Penske] has put a lot of effort into the track and it means a lot to the drivers. I was impressed how smooth the track is, and pit row too.”

Hamilton drove 255 laps, averaging 180.9 mph with a straightaway speed of 207.

“The facility is fantastic,” said Dale Inman, Hamilton’s team manager. “The testing just confirmed what we expected: a first-class track from Penske.”

Tony Freund, Goodyear’s NASCAR development group leader, said Hamilton and Schrader tested a dozen different combinations of tire construction, compounds and stagger.

“We wanted to try every conceivable combination to find what would be best when we come back in June,” Freund said.

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For the last 20 years, Paula and Mike Gibeault of Ridgecrest have put on the Rim of the World PRO Rally, a round of the Michelin Sports Car Club of America’s national championship series.

This year, Paula will step out of her promoter’s uniform and into a racing suit to ride with Mike Whitman, an America West pilot from Farmington, N.M., and a former resident of Ridgecrest, in a new right-hand-drive Ford Sierra Cosworth. The rally is scheduled for May 2-3 in the Angeles National Forest, west of Palmdale in the Lake Hughes area.

In a PRO Rally, each team has a driver and a co-driver, who is really a navigator, and the exact course is kept secret until just before the event, when the navigator is given a chart book. Cars start at one-minute intervals and race against the clock in stages ranging in length from four to 25 miles.

In the bright red Sierra, brought over from England, Whitman does the driving, Paula the navigating.

Favored is national champion Paul Choiniere and co-driver Jeff Becker in a Hyundai Tiburon built by rally-legend John Buffum. Choiniere and Becker won last year’s Rim of the World rally and also won the first two events this season.

FORMULA ONE

Old-time racers like to say that the Grand Prix season doesn’t really start until the cars get to Europe. After races in Australia, Brazil and Argentina, the caravan reaches Europe on Sunday with the San Marino Grand Prix at the Autodromo Ferrari. There is little likelihood, however, that the results will change as Jacques Villeneuve continues to make a shambles of Formula One competition. The young Canadian has won all three poles and two of the races. If it hadn’t been for an accident that knocked him out of the race in Australia, Villeneuve would undoubtedly be 3-0. . . . Former Formula One champion Nikki Lauda, 48, had a successful kidney transplant Thursday in Vienna.

NASCAR

Coming soon: Tony Stewart, IRL’s poster boy, will sign shortly with Winston cup owner Joe Gibbs to drive Busch Grand National races later this season. . . . After watching Jeff Gordon win short-track races the last two weeks, Winston Cup drivers can stretch out Sunday with the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. At 2.66 miles, it is the longest track on the circuit. . . . Petty, Don Garlits, Jim Hall, Rick Mears, Buddy Baker and the late Ralph Earnhardt will be inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame tonight at Talladega. . . . Of the 30 Winston Cup drivers who have driven in all eight races, Robby Gordon is last in points.

CART

Nazareth Speedway, site of Sunday’s Bosch Spark Plug Grand Prix, will have a new look after undergoing an $8-million renovation that included a new 37,000-seat grandstand. Michael Andretti, who lives in Nazareth, is the defending champion. . . . Max Papis, driving a Reynard-Toyota for Cal Wells and Frank Arciero, has never driven at the mile oval in Pennsylvania. “What I know about Nazareth is what I have learned from driving the track on my computer game,” he said.

NHRA

Connie Kalitta, owner of the two-car American International Airways top-fuel racing team, is taking a temporary leave of absence from driving because of the press of his airline business. Connie’s son, Scott, will drive his father’s car with Ed McCulloch as crew chief in this weekend’s Pennzoil Nationals in Richmond, Va. Dick LaHaie, who was Scott’s crew chief when he won Winston top-fuel championships in 1994 and 1995, is also taking a leave of absence.

NECROLOGY

Jeff Krug, 40, National Hot Rod Assn. competition eliminator champion in 1994, was killed last Sunday when his B/street roadster went out of control and flipped during the District 7 Federal Mogul championships at Famoso Dragstrip, north of Bakersfield. Krug, a construction company executive from El Monte, is survived by his mother, Dolores, and a brother, Karl. A memorial service will be held May 8 at 1 p.m. at the Pomona Raceway.

Vasek Polak, 82, a longtime patron of Porsche cars and drivers as a sponsor and car entrant, died April 16 of injuries suffered in an automobile accident in Germany. Polak, who lived on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, is survived by a daughter, Venda Jezbera of Thousand Oaks, a son, Vasek Polak Jr., of Portland, Ore., and grandchildren.

LAST LAPS

Kern County Raceway in Rosamond will open its season Saturday with a full program of stock car racing. . . . Ed Hale, 59, who won the Cajon Speedway super-stock championship in 1970 and again in 1983, then won the sportsman class in 1993, is back again, leading in the track’s pony stocks division this season.