They Keep On Truckin' in Bakersfield

By SHAV GLICK

Oct. 16, 1998 12 AM PT

Four years ago, at Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield, NASCAR began the Craftsman Truck series for American-made full-sized racing pickups. It started with a demonstration race won by PJ Jones and included only seven races in its first season.

The fledgling series has grown to 27 races with $7 million in awards. Mesa Marin’s high-banked half-mile oval is still part of the schedule.

For the record:

12:00 a.m. Oct. 17, 1998 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday October 17, 1998 Home Edition Sports Part D Page 11 Sports Desk 1 inches; 22 words Type of Material: Correction
Motorcycle racing--Scott Parker rode a Harley-Davidson to his ninth national championship Sunday at Del Mar. His motorcycle was misidentified Friday.

NASCAR will be back in Bakersfield this weekend, not only for the Craftsman Trucks on Sunday, but also for the Winston West on Saturday night and the Featherlite Southwest Tour tonight.

The truck series has become the most closely contested in NASCAR with defending champion Jack Sprague and 1997 winner Ron Hornaday Jr. swapping the lead at nearly every race. With three to go--Mesa Marin, Phoenix and Las Vegas--Sprague leads by 18 points.

When Sprague finished ninth last week at Sears Point, he regained the lead for the fifth time this season. Hornaday was 23rd as sports car veteran Boris Said scored his first win.

Hornaday, who grew up racing at Saugus and Mesa Marin, has a pole and a win on the Bakersfield track, where Sprague’s best finish is a fourth. Both drive Chevrolets.

“The track itself is a typical old short track,” Hornaday said. “There are a couple of lines you can run around the place. I am sure it will be one of the best races of the year. It will probably be the tightest pit road we see all year and that in itself will make things interesting.

“I always enjoy Bakersfield. I have family in the area [Palmdale] and a lot of my fans from Southern California always come to the races. It’s always nice to come to a place where you have a lot of fans.”

The truck race will be shown live at 2 p.m. on TNN.

Kevin Harvick, Winston West points leader from Bakersfield, has entered all three events. He led only one lap in last week’s Winston West race at Sears Point, but it was the last--for his fifth victory of the season in 12 starts.

Steve Portenga, winner of last month’s L.A. street race, can clinch the Southwest Tour title by finishing fifth or better in the remaining three races, starting with tonight’s 200-lap Coors 200. M.K. Kanke, his main challenger, has won three times at Mesa Marin.

A NIGHT IN DAYTONA

What could turn out to be a preview of the future of major league motor racing is scheduled Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway--three months after the NASCAR Pepsi 400 Winston Cup race was postponed by fires that raged around central Florida on the Fourth of July weekend.

It will be the first oval race under the lights on a 2.5-mile track. Night races have been held on shorter superspeedways, such as Las Vegas, Texas and Charlotte, but never on the grand scale of Daytona’s historic facility.

One result of the postponement is that the race will not be televised live on CBS in prime time, as it would have been in July, but it will be shown on TNN at 5 p.m.

The Pepsi 400 has attracted a sellout crowd of more than 150,000 and reviews from drivers and spectators will be studied closely. If they are favorable, motor racing may go the way of baseball, which was strictly a daytime sport until the lights went on one 1935 night in Cincinnati. Baseball has never been the same, with even the World Series now a night event.

Night racing has been a staple of short-track racing for years, but not until Musco Lighting set out to create what the Iowa firm calls “the largest lighted sports complex in the world,” has it been attempted on such a grand scale.

“It is not only the largest project we have ever undertaken, it’s the largest project ever, anywhere in the world,” says Joe Crookham, president of Musco Lighting.

To put the task in perspective, Crookham said the wattage necessary to successfully light Daytona’s track would equal that needed to light a two-way street from Daytona Beach, Fla., to Musco’s offices in Muscatine, Iowa.

“We expect it to be one of the greatest spectacles in motor racing,” said John Graham, speedway president. “It is definitely a breakthrough event for Daytona and NASCAR.”

Jeff Gordon, who needs only to finish fifth or better in the four remaining races to win his third Winston Cup championship, is an enthusiastic supporter of the experiment.

“I’m very excited about racing under the lights there,” he said. “I grew up racing at night on the short tracks, but to have lights all the way around a 2.5-mile superspeedway is really unbelievable.”

Bobby Labonte didn’t seem to mind the lights Thursday night, winning the pole for Saturday’s race by piloting a Pontiac Grand Prix around the oval at 193.611 mph in front of an estimated 100,000, among the biggest crowds ever to watch a NASCAR qualifying session.

Not everyone is looking forward to racing under the lights, however, especially on a track where carburetor restricter plates cause the cars to bunch together much of the time.

“I’m concerned about the shadows at night,” said three-time Winston Cup champion Darrell Waltrip. “On the other tracks where we race at night, there isn’t a lot of side-by-side racing, which there’s sure to be at Daytona.

“I’m concerned about how the cars and the drivers are going to react to the lights when we’re eight or 10 cars deep and two or three cars wide going around the banking.”

Shadows and all, Daytona will be the second restricter-plate race of the week for Winston Cup drivers, another result of the postponement. Last Sunday, at Talladega, Ala., an 11-car wreck knocked Mark Martin and crowd favorite Dale Earnhardt out of contention.

Restricter plates, designed to slow cars at Talladega and Daytona, predictably lead to close racing and major league wrecks.

TWO-WHEEL CHAMPIONS

The irrepressible Scott Parker rode his Honda to an easy victory in the Del Mar Mile on Sunday, winning his ninth AMA Grand National dirt track championship by two points over Del Mar runner-up Chris Carr. It was Parker’s seventh win this year. He first won the AMA crown in 1988. . . . Honda’s Mick Doohan of Australia has clinched his fifth consecutive world Grand Prix road racing championship.

Ben Bostrom of Granada Hills, on a Honda, unseated defending champion Doug Chandler of Salinas to win the AMA superbike championship. Bostrom did not win a race, but his brother Eric won twice. . . . The world superbike title went to Ducati rider Carl Fogarty of Great Britain. American Colin Edwards was fifth.

Kawasaki rider Damon Huffman of Acton won the U.S. Open of Supercross last weekend in Las Vegas with a second-place finish in the two motos. Ryan Hughes of Temecula (3-3) was second and Jeremy McGrath of Menifee (7-1) was third. Moto winners were Suzuki’s Robbie Reynard and Yamaha’s McGrath.

LAST LAPS

Jeff Jacobs, who seems to get better with age, will be going for his eighth International Jet Sports Boating Assn. championship Sunday in the 17th annual Skat-Track World Finals at Lake Havasu City, Ariz. Jacobs, 27, has been competing for 11 years as a professional watercraft racer and is the IJSBA’s all-time pro rider winner with 130 victories. National champion Vic Sheldon of Vista and hometown Lake Havasu favorites Chris Fischetti and Tera Crismon will offer stiff challenges to Jacobs.

Traditionally held in November, the California Hot Rod Reunion at Famoso Raceway, north of Bakersfield, has been moved to this weekend because of a conflict with the National Hot Rod Assn.’s Winston Finals at Pomona Nov. 12-15. Bakersfield native James Warren, a former top-fuel champion, will serve as grand marshal. Final eliminations for the vintage cars are Sunday.

Starting positions for the SCORE Tecate Baja 1000 will be drawn tonight on the Internet at 14 sites from Tijuana and La Paz to Las Vegas and Louisville, Ky. The live drawing will be held at the Speedway Cafe in Newport Beach. The 1000, which will run to La Paz, is scheduled for Nov. 13-15.

Despite a public shoving match with car owner Barry Green after nearly wrecking teammate Dario Franchitti at the last CART race in Houston, Canadian Paul Tracy got a new three-year contract to remain with Team KOOL Green.

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This Week’s Races

WINSTON CUP, Pepsi 400

* Schedule: Today, second-round qualifying, 3:30 p.m.; Saturday, race, 5 p.m. (TNN).

* Site: Daytona Beach, Fla.

BUSCH GRAND NATIONAL

Carquest Auto Parts 250

* Schedule: Today, qualifying, 11:45 a.m.; Saturday, race, 9:30 a.m. (Channel 2).

* Site: Madison, Ill.

CRAFTSMAN TRUCKS

Dodge California Truck Stop 300

* Schedule: Saturday, qualifying, 6:45 p.m.; Sunday, race, 2 p.m. (TNN).