Gurney Teams Moving Back to Fast Lane

Dan Gurney remembers last year’s PPG CART World Series race at Laguna Seca well, for all the wrong reasons. His team ran poorly when an important Toyota executive was visiting from Japan, and the Santa Ana-based All American Racers was “demoted” to No. 2 status in the Toyota Racing Development ranks.

When this season began, AAR was left to wait for the newest technology while the Toyota of Max Papis, which is based in Rancho Santa Margarita, was given the newest power-plant, the RV8B.

Well, the wait is over, and Gurney’s teams have shown quite a kick.

Going into the 10th race of the 17-race season--and its sixth with the RV8B--Gurney’s Reynard Toyotas already have become competitive with the Arciero-Wells team that had a four-race head start.

It was Gurney’s driver, Juan Manuel Fangio II, who picked up the only Manufacturer’s Championship points for Toyota with a 10th-place finish at the Detroit Grand Prix.

In the last two races, Fangio (of Miami) and P.J. Jones of Scottsdale, Ariz., each have finished in the top 15 once (Jones was 14th in Detroit), same as the Arciero-Wells duo of Newport Beach’s Papis, who finished 11th behind Fangio, and San Clemente’s Hiro Matsushita, who was 15th at the last race in Portland in a Toyota.

The teams race Sunday at the Grand Prix of Cleveland.

“We have established competitive equity,” said Gurney, who won 37 races in 25 makes of cars as a driver. “A lot of the pioneering [Arciero-Wells] did when they were exclusively testing the new power-plant was passed on to us, so we benefited.”

He’s grateful there’s another team with which to compare his team’s progress instead of being in this alone in Toyota’s second year as a PPG engine supplier.

“We have the greatest respect for all the Arciero-Wells people,” Gurney said. “We’re thankful we have them to measure ourselves against. We race each other very hard and it would be awful if we didn’t have them there to compete with, and I’m sure they feel the same way about us.

“I think it would be a great deal more difficult for us if we didn’t have them as a measuring stick. [Otherwise] you’d be groping around in the dark and probably having arguments among yourselves as to where you’re short, if you’re short.”

Though frustrated that his teams aren’t yet running with the leaders, Gurney said he’s intrigued by the Miller 200 in Lexington, Ohio; it’s a winding 2.25-mile road course that may give them a good chance to break into the top 10 again.

He also is upbeat about testing Monday and Tuesday at Elkhart Lake, Wis., in which Bobby Rahal posted the fastest time in 43.8 seconds, and Fangio was only 1.6 seconds slower, “which is faster than we expected to go.”

“In the end, we have to compete with Honda and Ford and Mercedes,” Gurney said. “Next year, if things go according to the plans laid down, we will have completed some pretty intensive testing with new cars, the latest engine specs with all the latest improvements, and I think we’ll be that much sharper and that much more ready. By then, we should be in a position to expect to be in the top 10 all the time. And the top 10 goes all the way down to first.”

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Newport Beach’s Rod Millen won his sixth race to the clouds over the weekend when he won the unlimited and overall championship at the 75th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. It was a near-miss for Millen, though. His time of 10 minutes 4.54 seconds was shy of his own record of 10:04.06, and he was again short of the elusive 10-minute barrier.

“You have to be honest with yourself,” said Millen, who drove a Toyota Celica up the 12.42-mile, 156-turn course. “If I had known I made a mistake and cost myself the four seconds, I would be very disappointed. But given the conditions, if you had given me 10 more shots, I don’t think I could have gone that fast.”

The course ascends from 9,390 feet to 14,110, and there are 18 switchbacks that require Millen to shift to first gear and go 20 mph. Still, he said he averaged 75 mph up the hill.

“Although 95% of the course was fast, there were six to eight corners that were much slower than when we practiced,” Millen said.

Millen set a practice record in the middle portion of the course, but it rained the night before the race. An example of the changing conditions on the mountain can be gleaned from the racing surface temperatures at the starting line (120 degrees) and the finish (60).

“In time, the conditions will be perfect again,” Millen said, “and we have to be there to capitalize. Maybe it will be 1998.”

Millen’s son, Ryhs, won the High Performance Showroom Stock 2WD Class in a Toyota Supra with a time of 12:59.41, breaking Rod’s 1992 class record of 13:21.17--the last year they won concurrent titles.

“It chokes me up to watch him drive,” Rod Millen said. “As he’s practicing and qualifying, I’m trying to help him. Then I run up the road and watch him go by and it’s like, ‘Oh, I hope I didn’t make him go too fast.’ It’s the parenting side coming out. You want him to improve, but not go too fast and take unnecessary risks.”

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After finishing second at the American Speedway Finals, Costa Mesa’s Bobby Schwartz gave his trophy to Anaheim’s Randy Evans, who spent a year in a coma after a racing accident at Victorville, Aug. 26, 1995.

Evans, who suffered a traumatic head injury, is now confined to a wheelchair.

“When I saw him at Speedway that night, I hadn’t seen him there in a long time and felt compelled to give him something because I wanted him to know that his favorite sport, Speedway, remembers him,” said Schwartz.

Schwartz won Friday during opening night of the summer series at Victorville. It was the first race there since Evans was injured.

Notes

Monrovia’s Billy Hamill, the current speedway World Champion, is scheduled to compete Saturday at the Orange County Fair for the Fair Derby. Racing begins at 7:30 p.m. . . . Precision Preparation in Rancho Santa Margarita has added Chris Smith, 29, of Redondo Beach, to its growing roster of drivers. Smith is replacing another Redondo Beach driver, Leo Parente, for Atlantic Championship races Sunday in Cleveland and July 19 in Toronto.

The Orange County Motor Sports Notebook runs regularly during the summer. Suggestions are welcome. Call (714) 966-5904 or fax 966-5663.