Emig Plans to Pick Up Where He Left Off

Jeff Emig conceded one of his national motocross championships this year to Jeremy McGrath when Emig injured his back, but the Kawasaki rider is determined not to let his second one get away. McGrath, winning seven of 16 Supercross events on a Yamaha, among them the series finale last Sunday in Las Vegas, won his fifth stadium championship.

Emig, who missed the last six Supercross motos, will return to competition Sunday when the national outdoor MX season begins at Glen Helen Raceway, north of San Bernardino. Emig has won the 250cc title the last two years.

“I think my prospects are good, at least for defending the championship,” Emig said from his home in Riverside. “Maybe Sunday I’ll be a little too sore to stay up front, but I like the Glen Helen course. I won there last year, so that gives me a lift.

“To tell the truth, I think my layoff has helped me mentally. Maybe when this season started I’d lost a little enthusiasm. I’d won four straight championships [1996 world Supercross and national 250cc and 1997 U.S. Supercross and 250cc] and I didn’t really have any goals. I was sort of going along and riding the wave out. Now I’m committed to winning again.”

Emig, after finishing second to France’s Sebastien Tortelli in the opening event at the Coliseum, was hurt during Round 9 at Daytona International Speedway on March 7.

“I don’t really know what happened,” he said. “In my heat race I led to the last lap, when Doug Henry got by, but I beat Jeremy [McGrath]. I felt fine until I bent over to pick up my helmet and something really hurt. My back tightened up, real bad, but a therapist friend of mine got me loose enough to ride the main event.

“I had one of my best races of the year [finishing second to McGrath], but I hurt so bad I could hardly get my arms up to put on my goggles.”

Still hurting, Emig tried to ride a week later in the Louisiana Superdome. He crashed several times, came home and after doctors told him he had a severely strained ligament in his back and needed rest, he decided to sit out the rest of the Supercross events.

Riding on the natural terrain at Glen Helen and other outdoor events will be much less stressful on his back, Emig hopes. Supercross, with tight turns, short bursts of speed and hard landings after jumps, amounts to one jolt after another.

“Comparatively speaking, motocross is smoother,” he said. “That doesn’t mean the steep hills and terrain at Glen Helen is easy, but there are stretches where you’re not getting so bounced around. It takes more stamina, though. A Supercross doesn’t last more than 15-18 minutes, where each outdoor moto is 36 minutes. I’m sure my hands, feet and butt will get real sore.”

Racing will start at 1 p.m. Besides the 250cc motos, there will be 125cc championship events with Kawasaki rider Ricky Carmichael of Havana, Fla., a heavy favorite.

RALLY

The finest rallyists in the country, plus a few international teams, will find roads in the 15th annual Rim of the World Pro rally the roughest in years when they invade the Angeles National Forest this weekend.

It is the fourth round of the Sports Car Club of America’s Michelin Pro rally championship series, with the first segment starting at 7:30 tonight and the restart at 1 p.m. Saturday, both from the Holiday Inn in Palmdale.

“The fire roads of the Angeles National Forest are always rocky or sandy, but this year’s rain damage has produced big ruts and dirt slides as well,” race organizer Paula Gibeault said. “The National Forest Service does a tremendous job, trying to open the roads for us, but they’ve got their hands full.”

Favored, as usual, will be seven-time national champion Paul Choiniere of Shelburne, Vt., who has won the Rim rally five times. He and navigator Jeff Becker will be in the same Hyundai Tiburon that led late in the rally last year before losing a wheel and breaking a strut.

Choiniere is seeking his seventh consecutive pro rally championship--and his eighth overall--which would enable him to break a record held by his father-in-law, John Buffum, considered the greatest of all American rally drivers. Buffum, who helps prepare Choiniere’s car, won 11 championships, six in succession.

Several Mitsubishi Lancers, state-of-the-art rally cars that have been running in international rallies, will make rare U.S. appearances. David Summerbell of Jamaica will be running the newest model, and defending Rim rally champion Henry Joy of Atlanta, Mich., will be in an earlier model.

In the Rim rally, the exact course is kept secret until just before the start, unlike world rallies, which permit practice runs. There will be 20 stages, ranging in length from four to 25 miles on closed forest roads.

CART CHAMP CARS

David Bruns, vice president and chief designer for Swift Engineering and one of the race car builders’ original founders, is leaving the San Clemente firm to join Dan Gurney’s All American Racers as senior design engineer for advanced projects, which means a new Eagle chassis.

Hiro Matsushita, the first Japanese Indy car driver and a veteran of nine CART seasons, will race with the Arciero-Wells team for the final time Sunday in the Rio 400 in Brazil. It will be his 117th start. Matsushita, originally from Kobe, Japan, will remain as president of Swift Engineering. Robby Gordon will be his replacement when CART races May 23 at Gateway Raceway in Madison, Ill., across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.

Going and coming from the Rio 400 presents a logistical nightmare for American teams, which will fill three planes with 200,000 pounds of cars and equipment each for an 11-hour 45-minute flight from Indianapolis to Rio de Janeiro, with a two-hour fuel stop in Caracas, Venezuela.

MIDGETS

Sleepy Tripp finally hit 100. The two-time U.S. Auto Club national champion from Costa Mesa and the winningest driver in midget history, ended the long quest for his 100th Western States victory last Saturday night at Ventura Raceway. It was his first triumph since July 20, 1996, also at Ventura, and his 355th Western States start.

Tripp, 44, won USAC titles in 1975 and 1976 and is the only seven-time Western States champion, having won in 1983, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991 and 1992.

INDY 500

Indianapolis Motor Speedway will open Sunday for practice, leading up to its weekend of qualifying, May 16-17, and the 82nd annual 500 on May 24. . . . McCormack Motorsports, which earlier announced that it would be using a Nissan Infiniti Indy engine, has decided to return to the Olds Aurora V-8 power plant for the race. That leaves Jack Miller and Lyn St. James as the only drivers using Infiniti engines.

LAST LAPS

The Sprint Car Racing Assn., frustrated by rainouts, has scheduled a race Saturday night at Perris Auto Speedway after a scheduled event at Santa Maria was canceled because of poor track conditions. Two events at Perris had been postponed last month. When rain last Saturday night caused another postponement at Thunderbird Speedway in Tulare, the SCRA ran a rare Sunday afternoon race, in which Richard Griffin scored his first win of the season. Griffin holds the series lead with 748 points to 593 for Mike Kirby, 538 for Rip Williams and 527 for Cory Kruseman.

Longtime racing promoter Don Basile of Imperial Beach is recuperating from quadruple-bypass heart surgery at Mercy Hospital in San Diego after suffering an attack last Thursday. Basile, 81, began his career racing stock cars in 1946 at Carrell Speedway and, before retiring, had worked more than 20 years as an assistant to the late J.C. Agajanian at Ascot Park and other West Coast tracks.

NECROLOGY

Steve Woomer, one of unlimited hydroplane racing’s most influential personalities, died April 22 in Seattle of heart problems. Woomer, 58, has owned unlimited hydroplanes since 1983 and won Gold Cups in 1991 and 1994 with Mark Tate as his driver. Late last year, Woomer announced his retirement from the sport, but two months later changed his mind and was preparing for the 1998 season when he died. The future of his team is undetermined.