Passing Younger Riders Keeps Schwartz From Feeling His Age

His nickname, “Boogaloo,” is on his helmet, and the blue blur streaking the oval at the Costa Mesa Fairgrounds has a familiar riding style.

Bobby Schwartz will be 41 in August. This is his 24th season of Speedway.

“That makes me feel old,” Schwartz said, “but I’m still doing pretty good.”

Pretty good for an old guy, pretty good for a young one. Schwartz already has won twice in the five races this season, winning the Spring Classic last month and again two weeks ago.

“I still feel the fire inside, and I’ll keep doing it as long as I can enjoy it and win a few races,” said Schwartz, who won the U.S. National Championship in 1986 and ’89. “I don’t seem to be slowing down too much.”

Schwartz can talk knowingly of the past, when speedway riders raced four nights a week in places such as San Bernardino, Lake Perris and Victorville. Now, it’s down to one night, and even that has changed. The Costa Mesa Speedway has moved its 25-event schedule to Saturdays (7:30 p.m.) this year instead of its traditional Friday at Costa Mesa.

“It’s going to come back--somebody will start a track,” Schwartz said. “It’s not a bad sport, it just wasn’t promoted correctly at those other places. I think it will have a revival again.”

Schwartz says the crowds have changed over the years.

“It has turned into more of a family crowd instead of a chance for a biker guy to go to the races and get crazy,” he said. “It seems like it’s a place to go on a date. It’s much more mellow than in the 1970s and early ‘80s.”

The racing too, has changed through the years. It’s much more precise. The 1/10th-mile oval at Costa Mesa is wider and better--there are no more ruts--which provides for better racing.

“Before, it was more wild riding,” Schwartz said. “Now, there’s still wild riding, but the tracks have improved and the bikes have come so far. The racing is smoother and more controlled, instead of guys on their back wheel throwing dirt in your beer cup.”

And that’s good news for an accomplished old-timer like Schwartz, who rides for Russell Racing.

“I like being there for the young kids who are coming up, and it’s nice being one of the top riders in the sport,” he said. “There are a handful of us who are still among the top riders, who can compete with the great riders in Europe when they come back here.”

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For the first time since 1993, the Speedway Racing U.S. National Qualifying Series will stop in Costa Mesa.

The reinstated series of California races begins May 17 at the Orange County Fairgrounds and continues May 30 (Paso Robles), June 6 (Auburn) and July 26 (Dixon). The top eight riders from the first three events will compete in the North American qualifier for the Federation Internationale Motocyclists FIM World Championship semifinal on June 14 in Costa Mesa.

The top four advance to the intercontinental final in Europe, which is the semifinal of the world championship.

The top 12 riders from the North American qualifier, and the top three American riders from the British League, will compete in the U.S. National Championship Oct. 4, also in Costa Mesa. It’s the final race of the season.

Riverside’s Steve Lucero is the defending U.S. Speedway national champion.

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Bruce Penhall, former two-time speedway national champion, and teammate Dennis Sigalos, a former world pairs champion, began their fourth year of speedboat racing April 13 with a victory in the San Francisco Offshore Classic.

The next race is May 18 in Ft. Myers, Fla., the first race in the American Power Boat Assn. National Offshore series, an 11-race circuit.

They’ll be competing in their backyard, along with a number of other local drivers, on June 1 at Dana Point Harbor in the Ocean Spray Gran Prix, a race that Penhall-Sigalos have won the last three years in the D Class.

This season, the duo are racing in Super Vee but with the same boat they competed in last year. The boat, a Wellcraft Scarab, has had a face-lift and is now powered by twin Paul Pfaff supercharged 1,300 horsepower engines.

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The International Jet Sports Boating Assn. season begins its season Saturday in Islamorada, Fla., in the Florida Keys.

Three local riders are among the favorites to win the IJSBA Big Red Jet Sports Tour national title in their respective divisions.

In the IJSBA’s featured class, Pro Runabout 785, Laguna Niguel’s Bill Pointer (Yamaha) won twice last year and was in the points championship race until the season’s last race.

Costa Mesa’s Tom Bonacci, riding for West Coast Performance Sea-Doo of Anaheim, was the hottest rider in the Pro Runabout 785 during the second half of the season. He won two of his last four races--and led the other two before falling off.

Closer to home, the B.P. Racing Offshore Championship Series continues with its second AquaMoto Gran Prix on Saturday in San Diego. The first event of the AquaMoto triple crown, the Laughlin (Nev.) AquaMoto Sports challenge, is May 29-June 1.

Notes

The highest-placing local finishers at last weekend’s second SCORE Las Vegas 300 off-road desert race were Orange’s Danny Letner, who took second in his Chevrolet S-10 in the Trophy Truck class, and San Clemente’s Craig Forrest, who took second in the Class 1-2/1600. . . . Irvine-based Kia won the Class 3 race with driver Darren Skilton of Long Beach, and Irvine-based Team MacPherson won the Class 7 race with former motorcycle champion Larry Rosseler of Hesperia at the wheel. The next race is one of the big ones, the Baja 500, June 6-8. . . . Ike Clanton of Santa Fe Springs has been named track announcer for Speedway at the Costa Mesa Fairgrounds. He has been announcer for the Long Beach Grand Prix the past 12 years.

James John Hurley, a senior at Visalia Redwood High, received the first $10,000 Jeff Krosnoff Scholarship. Krosnoff was killed in a crash last July in the Toronto CART event while driving for Santa Margarita-based Arciero-Wells. Hurley, one of 1,461 students who submitted an essay on “a dream or special experience,” will attend Georgetown. Hurley’s essay was titled, “Enjoy the struggle, the opportunity is a gift.”