Multi-Attraction Programs Provide Boon for Unlimiteds

There was a time when all that was needed to attract 150,000 or more people to Mission Bay for an unlimited hydroplane race was a heads-up battle between Bill Muncey in Atlas Van Lines and Dean Chenoweth in Miss Budweiser, or Chip Hanauer in the Atlas boat and Jim Kropfeld in Miss Bud.

The superstars of the unlimiteds are gone now. Muncey and Chenoweth were killed in racing accidents, Kropfeld and Hanauer were seriously injured and retired. Defending series champion Dave

Villwock was just gaining superstar status after winning five consecutive races when he was injured in midseason and sidelined the remainder of the season.

So Bill Doner, commissioner of the Unlimited Hydroplane Racing Assn., and Jim Kidrick, executive director of San Diego’s Bayfair ‘97, decided the way to put on a modern-day racing spectacle was to flood the water with boats.

When the Unlimiteds show up today at Mission Bay for their 31st annual weekend of racing for the Bill Muncey Cup, they will share attention with Formula One tunnel boats, International Hot Boat Assn. drag boats, Grand Nationals, crackerboxes, Thunderducks, water skiers and Unlimited Lights. Kidrick calls it the World Series of Power Boat Racing.

“Frankly, in this day and age, watching only the unlimiteds and then waiting around while nothing was happening would be boring,” Doner said. “Can you imagine a drag race with only top fuelers? Nobody would show up.”

Kidrick, who pioneered the multi-attraction program when interest in the unlimiteds began to wane a few years ago, received an award from the UHRA last year for his “outstanding contribution” to the sport.

Villwock, who lost two fingers and nearly his right hand when Miss Budweiser crashed last July in Tri-Cities, Wash., will be in San Diego as a spectator. His nearly severed hand was reattached in a six-hour operation. The 6-foot 4-inch driver and team manager also had a broken right forearm and a concussion when the latest-model Miss Budweiser suddenly went airborne and landed upside down on the Columbia River.

Villwock won the 1996 championship driving Fred Leyland’s PICO American Dream but in the off-season accepted Bernie Little’s offer to drive Miss Budweiser. After Villwock was hurt, Little called Hanauer, who had walked away from Miss Budweiser early last season after a series of accidents in which he questioned the hull design.

“Boats coming out of that team keep going upside down at a higher rate than other boats on the circuit,” Hanauer told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer after rejecting Little’s offer. “I think the sport needs to be stripped down to a bare chassis and start completely over again. To me, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Sunday’s championship heat is expected to come down to three boats from the 14 entries:

* PICO American Dream, driven by Mark Evans, which has won all three races since Villwock’s injury. Curiously, Evans won the final two races in 1996, including San Diego, in Miss Budweiser, as a replacement for Hanauer.

* Miss Budweiser, with rookie Mark Weber as Villwock’s replacement. Weber, 33, is the youngest driver on the circuit but has won 10 national championships in smaller boats. Miss Budweiser, thanks to Villwock’s early wins, continues to lead in boat points.

* Close Call, driven by three-time champion Mark Tate. Although winless this season, the Detroit veteran leads in driver points with 8,369 to 8,230 for Evans and 8,025 for Villwock.

Although Doner, a former drag racing promoter and Costa Mesa sportswriter, announced his resignation as commissioner July 7 during the Governor’s Cup regatta in Madison, Ind., he has since changed his mind and Thursday he told the UHRA board, meeting in San Diego, that he will return for his fifth year at the helm in 1998.

“It seemed like the world was against me during the first half of the season,” Doner said. “It rained every time we had a race scheduled on TV, one race had to be postponed, which was hard on everyone, and some of the owners were ripping me for some rule violations I called on them and it just wasn’t fun anymore. I felt someone else might do a better job.

“Then, when we got out West, everything turned around. The races at Tri-Cities, except for Villwock’s flip, and Kelona [Canada] were great and the crowds and enthusiasm at Seattle were better than they had been for years. At the same time, I felt an outpouring of support for me, so I’ll stick around next year and see some of my ideas through.”

IRL

The diminution of the “World’s Greatest Spectacle in Racing” continued Thursday with the announcement by Indy Racing League founder Tony George that practice for the Indianapolis 500 will be reduced from two weeks to one and qualifying from four days to two. Practice next year will open Sunday, May 10, with pole day time trials May 16, bump day trials May 17 and the race May 24.

“We want to get back the intensity we had,” George said. Curiously, it was the desire of most CART teams to shorten practice time for the 500 that led to George’s forming his own IRL “to save the traditions.” However, with stars such as Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr. and Bobby Rahal missing, and equipment-poor IRL teams rarely practicing, attendance dropped off markedly every day except race day.

NASCAR

The Winston Cup race at California Speedway will have a different date next year--Sunday, May 3, instead of June 22. This caused the road race at Sears Point Raceway to be moved to June 28. The 1998 schedule includes an added race, March 1, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, expanding the Winston Cup season to 33 races.

CART

Richie Hearn, who has been frustrated all season driving an noncompetitive Lola chassis, will switch to a Swift for the season finale Marlboro 500 on Sept. 28 at Fontana’s California Speedway. Car owner John Della Penna said his team will race Swifts, made in San Clemente, next season. The car Hearn will drive at Fontana is the one that Michael Andretti drove to victory in the opening race at Homestead, Fla. It has been a Newman-Haas team test car since midseason.

FORMULA ONE

BMW, which dropped out of Grand Prix racing 10 years ago, will return in 2000 as the engine builder for Frank Williams’ team. Paul Rosche, who designed the BMW Formula One engine that won the world championship in 1983 with Brazilian Nelson Piquet as the driver, will be technical director of the new BMW Williams power plant. Williams drivers Jacques Villeneuve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen are using Renault V-10 engines this season.

NHRA

Crew chief Dale Armstrong, who tuned Kenny Bernstein’s cars to five championships and the sport’s first 300 mph run in 1992, has left Bernstein after nearly 16 seasons. . . . Ed “Ace” McCulloch, crew chief for top-fuel driver Scott Kalitta, was fined $5,000 by NHRA for a confrontation with a fan in the pit area during the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis.

STREAKS

Rip Williams has won the last three and seven of the last eight Sprint Car Racing Assn. main events at Perris Auto Speedway and probably will make it eight of nine in Saturday night’s 30-lap main event. “This streak could end at any time,” Williams said. “As ol’ Bub [brother-in-law and track superintendent Bubby Jones] used to say, ‘You meet the same guys going up as you do going down,’ but I’m enjoying the heck out of it right now.”

Tony Green, 18-year-old high school senior from Oakhill, has won eight straight street stock races on Victorville Speedway’s three-eighths-mile dirt oval and hopes to close the track’s season Saturday night with No. 9. Green--whose father, Rusty, drove stock cars at Ascot, Corona, Chula Vista and other short tracks until 1990--raced motocross until last year when he switched to stock cars and was named rookie of the year at Pearsonville Speedway.

LAST LAPS

Les Richter, executive vice president of California Speedway, has taken on added duties as chairman of the new Trans-Am Council, which will oversee the Sports Car Club of America’s Trans-Am series. . . . Richter’s announcement prompted Professional SportsCar Racing founder Andy Evans to cancel the proposed American StockCar Championship, including an invitational race in Las Vegas.

Jeff Emig, newly crowned 250cc motocross and Supercross champion from Riverside, will head the defending champion United States team in the 51st Motocross des Nations in Nismes, Belgium, on Sunday. Riding with Emig will be Steve Lamson, also of Riverside, and John Dowd of Chicopee, Mass. . . . Jeremy McGrath, a member of last year’s Motocross des Nations championship team, will be at Quail Canyon Park, near Gorman, on Sunday to sign autographs before the 16th annual CMC Trans-Cal motocross.

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This Week at a Glance

WINSTON CUP, CMT 300

* Where: New Hampshire International Speedway, 1.058-mile paved oval, Loudon, N.H.

* When: 9:40 a.m. Sunday, TNN

* Qualifying: Today-Saturday.

* Defending champion: None (first fall race).

* Last week: Dale Jarrett outran fast-closing Jeff Burton and Jeff Gordon to win the Exide NASCAR Select Batteries 400 at Richmond, Va. Gordon replaced Mark Martin atop the driver standings, with Jarrett in third, 115 ahead of Burton.

* Fast fact: Jarrett’s five victories, 15 top-5s and $1,977,077 in earnings rank second to Gordon’s nine, 18 and $3,720,887.

NHRA, Pioneer Electronics Keystone Nationals

* Where: Maple Grove Raceway, Reading, Pa.

* When: 8 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, TNN

* Qualifying: Today-Saturday

* Defending champions: Kenny Bernstein, top fuel; Jeff Arend, funny car; Jim Yates, pro stock; Matt Hines, pro stock motorcycle.

* Last week: Idle.

* Fast fact: Cory McClenathan has won four of the last five top-fuel competitions to pull into second place, 153 points behind season-long leader Gary Scelzi.

BUSCH GRAND NATIONAL, Idle

* Next race: Sept. 20, MBNA 200, Dover, Del.

CART, Idle

* Next race: Sept. 28, California 500, Fontana.

IRL, Idle

* Next race: Oct. 11, Las Vegas 500K, Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

FORMULA ONE, Idle

* Next race: Sept. 21, Austrian Grand Prix, Osterreichring.

CRAFTSMAN TRUCKS, Idle

* Next race: Sept. 27, Hanes 250, Martinsville, Va.

Identifying race cars:

* SPRINT CAR RACING ASSN.: Non-winged, 1,200-pound cars that produce 750 horsepower from 410-cubic-inch engines. Based in Perris, SCRA races mostly on Saturday nights in Southern California and Arizona. Must race on Hoosier tires. Main event Saturday night at Perris Auto Speedway.

* WORLD OF OUTLAWS: Recognizable by their billboard-sized wings, the Outlaws are headquartered in Plano, Texas, but race across the nation, sometimes three or four times a week. The 410-cubic-inch engines are heavily modified with composites and space-age materials to lighten the weight, and produce about 800 horsepower. Outlaws, running on any brand of tire, will be at Kings Speedway in Hanford tonight and Santa Maria Speedway on Saturday night.

* IMCA: Same size chassis as SCRA or Outlaws, but powered by 360-cubic-inch engine and use narrower spec tires under International Motor Contest Assn. rules. Based in Vinton, Iowa, IMCA conducts events nationally, with and without wings. Cars at Ventura will be wingless Saturday night.