Supercross' Big Mac Will Create Some Excitement at the Coliseum

By SHAV GLICK

July 9, 1999 12 AM PT

Summercross, a Supercross look-alike in the Coliseum on Saturday night, is not a sanctioned American Motorcyclist Assn. race nor will it have most of the Supercross factory riders--but it does have Jeremy McGrath.

In what might be called a motorcycle racing version of Mark McGwire thrilling fans by hitting home runs in batting practice, McGrath will entertain an expected 50,000 spectators by riding his Mazda Team Chaparral Yamaha in the event.

For the record:

12:00 a.m. July 10, 1999 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday July 10, 1999 Home Edition Sports Part D Page 11 Sports Desk 1 inches; 25 words Type of Material: Correction
Auto racing--Butch Gilliland will be a replacement driver for Jerry Dodd in tonight’s street stock feature at Perris Auto Speedway. The site was left out in Friday’s editions.

Steve McLaughlin, who worked with Mike Goodwin when the Superbowl of Motocross introduced stadium racing to the world in the early 1970s, decided to promote the race when he found that the Coliseum had been left off the 1999 AMA Supercross schedule by Pace Motor Sports.

“I’m from Pasadena and my first idea was to promote a world championship race in the Rose Bowl, but when someone else got there first, I decided to return racing to the Coliseum and bring back the peristyle jump, the most famous jump in all of Supercross racing,” McLaughlin said.

The nationally ranked riders will be missing because they are in the middle of the national outdoor 250cc championship series and the factories do not want to take a chance of their being injured. McGrath is not riding in the outdoor season.

Among the better-known riders entered Saturday night are Doug Dubach, five-time national veterans’ champion and two-time world four-stroke champion; Jeff Matiasevich, a former Supercross winner who has been racing in Japan; Buddy Antunez, three-time Arenacross champion, and Tim Ferry, McGrath’s Yamaha teammate.

L.A. STREET RACE

Adrian Fernandez, Mexico’s No. 1 race driver, will make his NASCAR stock car debut in the third annual Ford L.A. Street Race on Labor Day, Sept. 6.

Fernandez, a regular on the CART champ car open-wheel circuit, will drive a Ford Taurus in the Featherlite Southwest Tour race on an artificial street course in Exposition Park.

Like NASCAR drivers Mark Martin, Ken Schrader and Chad Little, who drove in last year’s race the day after a Winston Cup race in South Carolina, Fernandez will fly to Los Angeles for the stock car event after having driven his Patrick Racing Reynard-Ford in Vancouver, Canada, on Sept. 5.

“The Ford Motor Co. invited me to race and I am happy to do it,” said Fernandez. “I won’t get any practice until Monday morning, just before qualifying, but I think I can adapt to the different style of driving.”

The race will be held on an eight-turn, one-mile course bordering the Sports Arena and Coliseum.

Although the Southwest Tour race is set for Monday, the L.A. Street Race will be a three-day event, also including the American IndyCar Racing Series, Ultra Wheel Spec Trucks and PRO Racing Series featuring late model Porsches, Ferraris, Vipers, Mustangs, BMWs and Corvettes.

SUPERBIKES

“A foolish consistency,” essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Not so, says national Superbike champion Ben Bostrom of Granada Hills, who managed to win the coveted motorcycle racing title last year without winning a single race on his Honda.

This year, after switching to a Ducati, he is only five points out of first place after nine rounds--and still hasn’t won. He has finished second in five successive races, however.

“As long as I’m on the podium [first three finishers], I’m happy,” Bostrom said. “With five races remaining, it doesn’t really matter where I finish, as long as I’m ahead of Mat Mladin and my teammate [Anthony Gobert]. It’s not important to win, it’s only important to finish ahead of them, even if it’s fifth or sixth.”

Mladin, a Suzuki rider, is the points leader with 269, with Vance & Hines Ducati teammates Bostrom and Gobert tied at 264. Mladin has won once, Gobert five times.

Bostrom and Gobert will be in a different setting this week, riding in Sunday’s World Superbike Championship at Laguna Seca, and Bostrom says he is approaching the race with an entirely different attitude.

“I’m very positive, I’m going up there with the idea of winning,” he said. “I think it would be great if three American riders filled the podium, and I think we can do it. Of all the tracks we run, I’ve had more laps at Laguna Seca than any other. I look on it as my home track and I don’t need to hold anything back for points.”

Bostrom, 25, is fortunate to be riding at all after suffering a career-threatening accident while testing at Daytona International Speedway in December. The crash severely damaged both hands, destroying the tendon in his left thumb and the knuckles in his right hand.

“It was my first day on the Ducati, after joining Vance & Hines, and I was on worn tires going through the high banking in fifth gear when a tire blew out and I got high-sided [pitched over the top of the bike] at about 170 mph. The back of my helmet was crushed and I was in the hospital a couple of weeks, but I made it back for the first race.”

The first race was the Daytona 200, and Bostrom admits he felt uneasy about returning there, but he managed to finish fourth, only .002 of a second out of third.

“I didn’t want to go back, I’ll admit it,” he said. “I was kind of scared the first time I went through the banking. When I finished as high as I did, it gave me a good feeling to know I’d gone around that place 57 times and not flinched.”

Terry Vance, a former drag bike champion who owns Bostrom’s Ducati, said he and the crew were astounded at how quickly their rider returned to riding.

“It would not have surprised me if he had been out for a year,” Vance said, “but before the doctors even began grafting his hands back into shape, he was talking about getting back on the bike to test. He’s one tough guy.”

Bostrom says he gains his competitive edge from having been raised with two racing brothers. Eric, who replaced Ben on the Honda team, is 10th in Superbike standings, and Torsten is a desert racer.

“Our dad and our uncle raced, and our mom rode trail bikes, so it was natural that we would ride,” Ben Bostrom said. “I was lucky to have brothers because we must have raced each other just about every day of our lives. Every time we got on a bike, we wanted to be faster than the other two. It was neat.”

Despite Bostrom’s different outlook about the world championship race, and the fact that Gobert won at Laguna Seca in 1995 and 1996 and Bostrom finished third last year, the favorites will be the World Superbike series regulars, defending champion Carl Fogerty, Australian Troy Corser, New Zealander Aaron Slight, Italian Pier Francisco Chili and the lone American, Colin Edwards of Texas.

There will be two races of 28 laps each over Laguna Seca’s 2.238-mile, 11-turn road course.

IRWINDALE

After a U.S. Auto Club open-wheel program that attracted a near capacity crowd last week, Irwindale Speedway will return to two nights of NASCAR stock car racing this weekend. Rod Johnson, who has moved up to third place in the Pacific Coast region of the Winston Racing Series, will drive in the super late model and Grand Am modified races Saturday night.

Steve Paden of Downey turned back the Midwest invaders in last week’s USAC midget feature, and Josh Wise of Riverside edged closer to points leader Randi Pankratz by winning the three-quarter midget main event. Both classes will run next week at Ventura Raceway.

UNLIMITED HYDROS

Only two drivers, Gar Wood and Chip Hanauer, have won American Power Boat Assn. Gold Cups in four consecutive years. Dave Villwock, in Miss Budweiser, will try to join that select pair in Sunday’s 91st Gold Cup on the Detroit River.

To do it, however, Villwock must beat Hanauer, back after a three-year absence to drive Miss Pico. Wood won five from 1917 to 1921. Hanauer won seven in a row from 1982 through 1988.

In four races this season, Villwock and Hanauer have won two each.

LAST LAPS

With Jerry Dodd suspended for rough riding, Winston West champion Butch Gilliland will drive Dodd’s car in Saturday night’s street stock feature. Gilliland’s son, David, who has won five of seven races, will not drive because he’ll be at a wedding.

Susie Arnold, director of special events for the National Hot Rod Assn., is leaving the drag racing organization today to work with top-fuel driver Kenny Bernstein. She is the fifth NHRA executive to leave in the last year as rumors circulate that president Dallas Gardner is planning to retire within the year.

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This Week’s Races

SUMMERCROSS

* When: Gates open 5:30 p.m. Saturday. First race 7:30 p.m.

* Where: Coliseum.

* Tickets: Coliseum box office, Ticketmaster outlets; Price--Adults, $25, $40 and $55. Children 12 and under, $10.

****

WINSTON CUP, Jiffy Lube 300

* When: Today, first-round qualifying, 1 p.m.; Saturday, second-round qualifying, 8 a.m.; Sunday, race (TNN, 10 a.m.)

* Where: New Hampshire International Speedway (oval, 1.058 miles, 12 degrees banking in turns), Loudon, N.H.

* Race distance: 317.4 miles, 300 laps.

* Defending champion: Jeff Burton