Perpetual ‘Silly Season’ Is Brutal for Some Drivers

It gets sillier and sillier, earlier and earlier, this quest for the right combination to get around the track or down the strip quicker than anybody else.

The formula is simple enough: money plus equipment plus crew plus driver equal winning, which brings more money, etc., in a circle that is becoming increasingly vicious, if you buy the thinking of those who see themselves as victims of the process.

Changes in any of the elements used to keep racing writers and those who talk about the game busy all winter in what baseball has always called “the hot stove league,” but motorsports calls “the silly season.”

No more. The silly season is 12 months long.

That it all starts with money was the issue just last week at Indianapolis, where NASCAR Winston Cup driver Ricky Rudd spent much of his preparation time for the Brickyard 400 complaining that his sponsor was about to take Horace Greeley’s advice.

Procter & Gamble was going to go West, to Cal Wells of Rancho Santa Margarita, who would put the company’s money to good use in his quest to add fendered cars to an open-wheel racing stable that has been 30 years in the building.

The deal is not yet set, but it’s close enough to talk about and Rudd sees the Tide ebbing on his Ford.

And he sees the role of owner-driver the way John Steinbeck saw plowed ground being blown away in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

“We’re being forced out to make room for these new big-money guys who are coming into the sport,” said Rudd, who has won a race every year since 1983, but hasn’t had a top-five finish this season and is 33rd in the standings.

“They’re looking at it as a business investment. Us old guys always looked at racing as more than that. We’ve invested our lives in it. Having to sell a race team is like having to sell a family farm.”

Rudd says he may have to do just that if another sponsor doesn’t emerge by September.

Tide, the detergent maker, will join McDonald’s with Wells in what is being predicted as a two-car team. The McDonald’s money is taking flight from Bill Elliott, like Rudd an owner-driver and a Winston Cup staple for many years, but a non-winner since 1994.

“These guys who’ve never been involved in our sport come in and make a slick presentation in some board room, and that seems to count for more than 25 years experience,” Rudd was quoted as saying.

Wait a minute.

For one thing, Wells is the new kid in NASCAR but he’s not exactly a neophyte racer. He began with off-road trucks almost 30 years ago, at 15.

“It was more affordable back then,” he says. “It was something you could do with a family.”

Wells, often with partner Frank Arciero, has continued in off-road trucks and added CART champ cars and Toyota Atlantic series cars.

“I just like to run cars, any type, any style,” Wells says. “I’ve always been interested in stock cars, since I saw A.J. Foyt run at Ontario and Mark Donohue win in a boxy Matador.”

The opportunity to run stock cars came from McDonald’s, whose bean counters figured advertising money might be better spent on another movie action figure or cartoon character to put in a box with a burger and fries.

Wells persuaded McDonald’s to stay in the sport. The company has another year with Elliott and is putting money in Wells’ Busch series team next season, with Toyota Atlantic driver Anthony Lazarro behind the wheel.

The year after, Wells in Winston Cup beckon to McDonald’s.

All of that was set when the stock car folks were at Fontana in May. But Tide, well that’s a different story.

“They came to us after the McDonald’s announcement,” Wells says. “They had read about what McDonald’s did.”

He’s reluctant to talk much about it, because contracts with Procter & Gamble have yet to be signed, but it’s no secret.

Certainly not from Rudd, who complains that Tide was first wooed by Larry McReynolds, who works for Richard Childress but apparently wants to strike out on his own.

“There’s not a lot of loyalty in this sport these days,” Rudd says.

It’s sport as business, as sure as baseball, football, basketball, hockey and anything involving money is business. Rudd helped NASCAR become as popular as it is, and therefore helped make it a good investment for somebody with a fair amount of business acumen and the ability to see beyond history.

Those things, Wells has.

“The changing of the guard is only natural,” he says. “NASCAR is 50 years old. The guys who ran the first race aren’t around anymore.”

Some of the guys who ran last week aren’t going to be around that much longer either.

NASCAR

Dale Earnhardt didn’t win again last weekend, so he fielded the same question this week that he fields every time his Chevrolet drives past the winner’s circle and on to the garage after a race.

Retirement?

“One day you’re on top of the world, the next day you’re not winning and they’re trying to retire you,” Earnhardt says.

He’s making no plans in that direction.

“Richard [Childress] and I are working on a contract for another three years, past 2000,” Earnhardt says.

While they’re working, he’s racing and this weekend at Watkins Glen will start his 600th consecutive Winston Cup race, second only to Terry Labonte’s 624.

CART

Al Unser Jr. finds himself in the unfamiliar role of looking for a job after last weekend’s announcement that his relationship with Roger Penske’s racing operation will end after the season.

Penske, stuck on 99 champ car wins since 1997 and not particularly competitive this season, has hired Greg Moore and Gil de Ferran to take his fortunes into the 2000s with contracts reported at $3.5 million each per year in three-year deals.

Unser last won in 1995 and is laboring in a 64-race drought.

It’s part of a year of upheaval for Unser, who is going through a divorce from his childhood sweetheart, Shelley, that also carries the emotional burden of four children.

One, 12-year-old daughter Cody, has a spinal condition that has her paralyzed from the chest down.

He races the rest of the season for Penske and as a sort of audition for someone else who might want to hire him.

“We’re not lame ducks, by any means,” Unser told the Associated Press, although he really is just that. “I’m going to try like the devil to get Roger his 100th victory.”

FORMULA ONE

Can it really be 20 years since Ferrari, seemingly a symbol of F-1 racing, has won a championship?

Eddie Irvine is on a quest to end that drought with two consecutive victories going into this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

He has taken over as the top Ferrari driver since Michael Schumacher suffered a broken leg in a crash in Britain, and with six races left on the schedule is on a pace to become the first Ferrari driver to win the series title since Jody Scheckter in 1979.

And then, rumor has it, Irvine will bolt to Stewart-Ford.

“I am really focused on this weekend,” he said in Budapest. “Next year is a long time away.”

IRL

Greg Ray escaped injury, but he crashed two cars in testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the Sept. 26 Vegas.com 500.

Ray was driving about 209 mph when his car lost traction and backed into the fourth-turn wall. Shortly thereafter, he put another car into the wall in Turn 2.

NHRA

Al Hofmann fired Jimbo Ermalovich as crew chief of his Pontiac Firebird funny car.

“This will give us time to reevaluate our program, rebuild for 2000 and make a run at the title next season,” Hofmann said.

Hofmann, used to running nearer the top of the standings, is 12th in funny car points with 504, well behind division leader John Force and his 1,361.

LAST LAPS

David Francis Jr., who grew up in Los Angeles and races in the Barber Dodge Pro Series, was the first driver selected for a test session as part of CART’s African American driver development program. Francis will drive an Arciero-Wells Toyota Atlantic car and, if all goes well, an Indy Lights car in testing at either Willow Springs or Buttonwillow after the racing season. He will be evaluated with an eye toward future employment.

Jeff Gordon enters this weekend’s race at Watkins Glen with a four-race winning streak on NASCAR road courses.

The Sprint Car Racing Assn. will return to Santa Maria on Saturday night, with Rip Williams seeking to repeat his July 10 victory on the track. Richard Griffin leads in the SCRA points race with 1,243, with Williams at 1,297.

Gary Tamborelli leads in the points race in the sportsman division, which runs Saturday night at Cajon Speedway. David Beat was second but lost all of his points two weeks ago when a post-race teardown revealed he was using nonconforming cylinder heads.

This Week’s Races

WINSTON CUP, Frontier at the Glen

* When: Today, first-round qualifying, 11 a.m. (ESPN2); Saturday, second-round qualifying, 7:45 a.m.; Sunday, race (ESPN, 9:30 a.m.)

* Where: Watkins Glen International (permanent road course, 2.45 miles, 11 turns), Watkins Glen, N.Y..

* Race distance: 220.5 miles, 90 laps.

* Last year: Jeff Gordon raced to his third consecutive victory and seventh of the year, successfully defending his title. Mark Martin finished second for the third consecutive race.

* Next race: Pepsi 400, Aug. 22, Brooklyn, Mich.

CART, Miller Lite 200

* When: Today, provisional qualifying, 11:30 a.m.; Saturday, final qualifying, 9:45 a.m. (ESPN2, 5 p.m.); Sunday, race, 11:30 a.m. (ESPN, tape, 12:30 p.m.)

* Where: Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (permanent road course, 2.258 miles, 13 turns), Lexington, Ohio.

* Race distance: 187.314 miles, 83 laps.

* Last year: Adrian Fernandez held off Patrick Racing teammate Scott Pruett by 0.247 seconds for the victory.

* Next race: Target Grand Prix, Aug. 22, Chicago.

FORMULA ONE, Hungarian Grand Prix

* When: Saturday, qualifying, (Speedvision, 4 a.m.); Sunday, race, (Speedvision, 4:30 a.m.; Fox Sports West, 10 a.m.)

* Where: Hungaroring (road course, 2.466 miles), Budapest.

* Race distance: 190.982 miles, 77 laps.

* Last year: Michael Schumacher won to move by Nigel Mansell into third place on the career victory list with 32.

* Next race: Belgian Grand Prix, Aug. 29, Spa-Francorchamps.