If They Needed a Challenge, Trucks Got It

While Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett continue their battle for the $1.5-million champion’s prize against Winston Cup competition Sunday at Talladega, Ala., the rest of the NASCAR world will be at Bakersfield for three days of short-track racing on Mesa Marin Raceway’s high-banked half-mile oval.

Tonight, it’s the Port City Racing 200 for Featherlite Southwest Tour drivers.

Saturday night it’s the Spears Manufacturing 250 for Winston West cars.

Sunday afternoon, the Dodge California Truckstop 300, featuring the Craftsman Truck series, winds up the weekend.

For the trucks, it will be the middle event of an unusual three-week swing through California. Last Sunday, on the road course at Sears Point in Sonoma,

veteran Joe Ruttman held off Tom Hubert to win his third race of the season. Next week, they move to Fontana to take on the two-mile California Speedway--the longest oval track the trucks have run.

“It’s tough, having to change your thinking three races in a row, but it’s tougher on the crew,” said Rich Bickle, a part-time Winston Cup driver chasing Jack Sprague for the truck championship.

“They have to change the suspension, differential and a dozen other things for each race. We won Martinsville [Va.] on a half-mile track the week before Sears Point, but it was nearly flat, totally different from Mesa Marin.

“I figure Mesa Marin owes me one. Sprague and I were going fender to fender, chasing [Ron] Hornaday in last year’s race when we caught him with only a few laps to go. I felt sure I was going to win, but we slammed together and Mike Skinner won the thing.”

Bickle, at 6 feet 5 the largest driver in the series, has the unique distinction of having driven trucks for two stock car legends, a Dodge for Richard Petty and a Chevrolet for Darrell Waltrip.

“I was sort of a fringe Winston Cup driver, not really accepted until Richard asked me to be his driver last year,” Bickle said. “That gave me immediate acceptance, sort of like, ‘If Richard says you’re OK, you’re OK by us.’ The feeling’s the same way running this year for Darrell. Next year, I hope to be in one of his Cup cars.”

After 23 of 26 races this season, Sprague leads Bickle, 3,350 to 3,273, with Ruttman closing in with 3,194.

“I’d be a whole lot closer if the No. 44 truck [Boris Said III] hadn’t taken me out at Sears Point,” Bickle said. “I was fourth with four laps to go when he deliberately knocked me off the track. By the time I got back running, I was 13th. I managed to pass one guy and finish 12th, but I figure it cost me between 25 and 30 points. The 44 and I had got together earlier on a restart, but he stayed in the pits until I was about to come by and then pulled out and just rammed me. I almost rolled over. It was totally uncalled for and very unprofessional.

“It also knocked the heck out of the truck, so much we had to send it back to [North Carolina] to get it fixed. That left us with just two trucks for Bakersfield and Fontana.”

Said, a rookie former sports car driver from Carlsbad, was fined $5,000, penalized 42 series points and put on probation for the rest of the season for “actions detrimental to auto racing--intentionally hitting another competitors’ truck.”

Although he is fourth in the standings, 246 behind Sprague, Hornaday is the defending series champion and has won seven of the 22 races. Since the closing of Saugus Speedway two years ago, the Palmdale native considers Mesa Marin his home track.

Hornaday, who moved to Mooresville, N.C., to drive a truck for Dale Earnhardt, won the pole for last year’s Mesa Marin truck race at a record 92.540 mph. In three races there, he has led 457 of 625 laps, winning once.

“I have always run well there,” the former Saugus champion said. “Plus, when you have a home team advantage, it can’t hurt. When I lived and raced in Southern California, we referred to Bakersfield as the ‘Daytona of the West.’

“The speedway in Fontana wasn’t even a dream then. Bakersfield was the only fast high-banked track around for us. You can run three wide around the place. If you were a race fan, then you always went to Bakersfield. It was a big deal when the NASCAR trucks rolled into town.”

Sunday’s race will be telecast live on TNN at 1:30 p.m.

With two races remaining in the Winston West season, Butch Gilliland of Anaheim holds a narrow 74-point lead over Sean Woodside of Saugus, with Canadian Gary Smith only 50 points behind Woodside.

Gilliland, who won last week at Sears Point in his Stroppe Motorsports Ford Thunderbird, has won four of 12 races. Woodside and Smith, battling for rookie-of-the-year honors, have each won two.

The Winston West season will end Nov. 8 at Las Vegas.

AMA DIRT TRACK

Scott Parker won the Grand National dirt track motorcycle championship for the eighth time, but the veteran from Swartz Creek, Mich., has one goal to reach. He wants to break a tie with Will Davis of Goldsboro, N.C., for most victories this season. Each has seven wins, Davis having pulled even last week at Las Vegas. Both ride Harley-Davidsons.

The Del Mar Mile on Sunday at the Del Mar Fairgrounds is the season’s final race. Parker has won two of the three races held on the horse racing oval. Kevin Atherton won last year’s race and is third in this year’s standings.

Also on the program will be an 883-class race with Dave Camlin of Rock Island, Ill., trying to protect his three-point lead over Jess Roeder of Monroeville, Ohio. Camlin has won six races, Roeder two, including last week’s at Las Vegas.

CART

Andre Ribeiro will replace Paul Tracy as Al Unser Jr.’s teammate on the Penske Racing team next year. Ribeiro, 31, who won three CART races while driving the last three seasons for the Tasman team, was signed to a multiyear contract. Tracy, who won three consecutive races early in the 1997 season, was released.

IRL

The IRL’s 18 month-long second season ends Saturday night with the Las Vegas 500K on Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s 1 1/2-mile oval.

Tony Stewart, Team Menard’s glamour boy in Tony George’s all-oval track series, holds a 10-point lead over Davey Hamilton, who drives for A.J. Foyt’s Power Racing team.

“I have nothing to lose at this point,” Hamilton said before Thursday night’s qualifying. “Tony has the lead and I know I have to do well. I’m going to run as hard as I can to win the race, but Tony is tough. I’d rather be 10 points ahead than 10 behind, but that’s not the way it is.”

Richie Hearn, winner of last year’s Las Vegas inaugural 500-kilometer race, is not competing, having switched to CART for the 1997 season.

The IRL has added three races to its 1998 schedule, bringing the total to 11. Added were Dover Downs, Atlanta Motor Speedway and a second race at Texas Motor Speedway.

NHRA

Last week was not a good one for Cruz Pedregon, the funny car driver from Camarillo on Joe Gibbs’ drag racing team.

On Sept. 29, he underwent an emergency appendectomy. Then on Sunday, racing John Force in the finals of the Pennzoil Nationals in Memphis, Tenn., the engine of Pedregon’s car exploded just short of the finish line and burst into flames, the worst fire of the NHRA season.

He managed to stop the car and got out under his own power, but was taken to Regional Medical Center in Memphis for treatment of burns on his right hand. After being released, he flew home.

LAST LAPS

A number of Southern Pacific division drivers will compete over the weekend in the Sports Car Club of America’s 34th Valvoline Runoffs at Mid-Ohio. Among them are defending champions Mike Lewis of San Diego in a Mazda RX7 in GT-3; Paul Bonaccorsi of Rancho Cucamonga, in a Dodge Neon in SSC; and Steve Kelso of Woodland Hills, in a Camaro, in AS. Wolfgang Maike of Santa Barbara, who edged Lewis by one point for the division championship, is also scheduled to race in GT-3, driving a Toyota Paseo.

More than 750 watercraft racers from 36 countries will compete this weekend in the 14th International Jet Sports Boating Assn.’s Skat-Trak World Finals at Lake Havasu City, Ariz. Featured will be the Pro Runabout 785 class with defending champion Chris Fischetti contending with Nicolas Rius, who dethroned Fischetti in the recent national championships. The popular Pro Freestyle class will have defending champion Rick Roy of Canada against U.S. runner-up Eric Malone and Brazilian Douglas Carvalho, last year’s world runner-up. Pro racing finals are Saturday and Sunday.

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INFOSTAT: Right Formula

Alain Prost (above) has the most Formula One victories:

1. Alain Prost: 51

2. Ayrton Senna: 41

3. Nigel Mansell: 31

4. Jackie Stewart: 27

5. Jim Clark: 25

5. Nicki Lauda: 25

5. Michael Schumacher: 25

8. Juan Manuel Fangio: 24

9. Nelson Piquet: 23

10. Damon Hill: 21