If Evans Prevails, the Sport Will Rock ‘n’ Roll Into a New Era

The power brokers in motor racing today are Bill France, O. Bruton Smith, Roger Penske and Tony George.

With their organizations--France’s International Speedway Corp., Smith’s Speedway Motorsports, Penske’s Penske Motorsports and George’s Hulman & Co.--they are buying and building race tracks, grabbing choice racing dates for their tracks or their own sanctioning

bodies, and in some cases racing their own cars on their own tracks.

Andy Evans wants a seat at the table.

Since the Seattle investment banker and former sports car driver bought the almost-dead International Motor Racing Assn. last September, he and his International Motor Sports Group have:

* Changed IMSA’s name to Professional SportsCar Racing, “more in keeping with what it really is.”

* Bought historic Sebring International Raceway in Florida and Canada’s Mosport Park, near Toronto.

* Run Team Scandia, a three-car Indy Racing League team with Eliseo Salazar, Vincenzo Sospiri and Jimmy Kite driving. Last May, at Indy, seven Scandia cars were entered.

* Run a top-fuel dragster for 18-year-old Cristin Powell in the National Hot Rod Assn.

* Bought into a NASCAR Winston Cup team with Brett Bodine driving.

* Obtained an International Hot Rod Assn. date for a new drag strip he is building at Sebring.

* Established a SportsCar office in Paris to help maintain a liaison with the FIA in sanctioning a World SportsCar Challenge, with races in the United States and Europe.

* Moved SportsCar headquarters from Tampa, Fla., to Las Vegas, where they will be located on the top floor of Las Vegas Speedway.

“I want to be a major player, definitely,” Evans said during a visit to Newport Beach to set up a branch SportsCar office to handle TV programming and marketing. “I’ve watched Bruton Smith and Bill France very closely and I want to copy them.”

Evans, 45, also watches closely the portfolio of client Bill Gates, billionaire head of Microsoft Corp. with whom he has been associated since they were in their 20s.

With SportsCar, Evans is concerned with an unusual set of demographics.

“Our target audience is 12 to 24, male and female,” he said. “Generation X are the Baby Boomers’ kids, and there is a great synergy between the generations. Baby Boomers are now between 35 and 50 and either own a sports car or wish they did.

“We want a market that appeals to both parents and the kids. If we can get 12-year-olds hooked, they’ll be our best customers down the road.”

To attract youngsters, Evans plans to repackage SportsCar into a quasi-entertainment organization with an emphasis on shorter, fast-paced races tied in with rock ‘n’ roll music.

“We want to build a rock ‘n’ roll mentality among sports car fans, the way NASCAR has done with stock cars and country music,” he said. “None of our races will be more than an hour and a half except the two traditional endurance races at Daytona [24 hours] and Sebring [12 hours]. We are also eliminating all of that class confusion and will have three single-class races. No more of finishing 12th and winning your class.”

The three SportsCar classes will be World SportsCar, featuring Ferrari, Ford and the Olds Aurora, with a possibility that Chevrolet, BMW and Nissan will become involved; GT, open to Ford Mustangs, Dodge Vipers, BMWs, Porsches, Corvettes and the like, and American Stock Car, a not-too-veiled attempt to lure teams and drivers from the Sports Car Club of America’s shaky Trans-Am series.

“We’ll have $200,000 prize money per event per race, and Trans-Am never paid that kind of money,” Evans said. “The only way to build a racing series is with money, TV and fans. We think we can do that and establish a road-racing renaissance.”

One of Evans’ fondest hopes is to run a race at the Marine Air Station in Tustin, site of last month’s Tustin Thunder for vintage cars.

“I followed their races very closely and I’m convinced that an excellent road course could be laid out at Tustin, very similar to the Cleveland airport track used by CART,” Evans said. “If Dick and John Marconi can get a second date from the Marines, it would make a big difference in our schedule. Southern California is a major market and we need to be here.”

If the Tustin date is available, SportsCar will have a 12-race schedule, starting with the Daytona 24-Hour in January and concluding with the championship finale at Las Vegas in the fall.

“In the last 12 months, I’ve logged 400,000 miles, mostly motor racing related,” Evans said. “In addition to planning 1998’s SportsCar season, I’ve not lost sight of my own teams. The only concession I made was to quit driving myself. I finished fourth at LeMans and said that was my last race.

“I won Sebring in my Ferrari for the second time in three years, but my competition wasn’t happy because I owned the track, the series and the car, but as far as I was concerned, it was no different than 1995 when I won in the same car and it was an IMSA race.”

Evans held a CART franchise when he bought Dick Simon’s operation in 1996, but elected to go with the IRL.

“Costs in the IRL are a third of what it takes in CART,” he said. “I know people are a bit disappointed with IRL’s progress but you have to remember that when the 1997 season started, the IRL was a totally new concept with its new chassis and engine rules.

“A lot of would-be teams took a wait-and-see attitude. Now that IRL has proven it can run interesting, competitive races, with much less cost, I expect to see a number of new faces next year--maybe even some from CART. And you can’t overestimate the fact that the IRL has the Indianapolis 500.”

FORMULA ONE

With five races remaining, starting with Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Jacques Villeneuve is only 12 points behind Michael Schumacher, but if history means anything, he might be better off not winning the title. Car owner Frank Williams has made a habit of discarding world champions--Nelson Piquet after he had won in 1987, Nigel Mansell after he had won in 1992, Alain Prost after he had won in 1993 and Damon Hill after he had won last season.

NASCAR

Now that Jeff Gordon has won the Winston Million, become the first driver to win three consecutive Southern 500s and four straight Winston Cup races at Darlington, what’s ahead for Wonder Boy? How about Richard Petty’s modern era single-season record of 13 victories. He needs to win five of the nine remaining races to break Petty’s mark. Richmond, a three-quarter mile oval, is up next on Sunday.

Dale Earnhardt was medically cleared to race Thursday after tests failed to show why he fell asleep at the start of last weekend’s Southern 500. Neurosurgeon Charles Branch, who performed tests on the driver at Bowman Gray Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., said a “migraine-like event” probably caused the lapse.

CART

Two drivers and two races are left to determine the $1-million PPG CART champion. Alex Zanardi holds a 38-point lead over Gil de Ferran with a maximum of 44 points available in the two remaining races, Sunday on the twisting road course at Laguna Seca and Sept. 28 on the two-mile California Speedway oval. No one else is in contention.

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INFOSTAT

What Flags Mean

* GREEN: 1. The start of the timing of a practice or qualifying session. 2. The impending start of a qualification attempt on an oval race track. 3. The signal to start racing upon crossing the starting line at the beginning of a race. 4. The restart of a race. 5. When displayed from a corner station, a green flag indicates that a previous condition has cleared.

* BLUE WITH DIAGONAL ORANGE STRIPE: Indicates that a faster race car is overtaking the race car being signaled and the race car being signaled should let the faster car pass.

* BLACK: Car being signaled must immediately go to the pit area for consultation.

* YELLOW: Requires drivers to slow down, exercise caution and maintain their relative positions. Cars may not pass each other under the yellow flag. At road course events, a yellow flag may also be displayed from flag stations to indicate an area of danger. A waving yellow flag indicates great danger.

* RED: Indicates a complete stoppage of the race, practice or qualifying session because of an unsafe condition. All drivers must immediately proceed to their assigned pit, if possible.

* WHITE WITH RED DIAGONAL STRIPE: Indicates an emergency or service vehicle is on the track and requires the reduction of speed.

* WHITE: Indicates to drivers that they have started their last lap. At road course events, a white fag displayed from flag stations indicates the presence of a slow moving race car on the racing surface. A weaving white flag indicates the presence of an emergency service vehicle.

* CHECKERED: The end of a practice or qualifying session, the completion of a qualifying attempt on an oval race track, or the completion of the race.

Researched by Houston Mitchell