He Might Win for Old Time's Sake

By SHAV GLICK

March 26, 1999 12 AM PT

One of the oldest drivers at Irwindale Speedway’s opening night on Saturday will be the busiest.

Wally Pankratz, 53, is the only driver entered in all three events--U.S. Auto Club midgets and sprint cars and the World of Super Modifieds.

“At this point, I’m still stubborn enough to feel I can win,” he said after taking a few quick laps in his midget car on Irwindale’s half-mile, banked oval. “I’ll stick with it a few more years. I didn’t start racing until I was 27, so I don’t feel burned out.”

Pankratz, who lives in Orange, comes from a racing family, but he was a football player before he drove race cars. He played in the Potato Bowl game with Fullerton Junior College in 1964 and then played at Idaho State.

“My father raced midgets at Gilmore, the Rose Bowl, Coliseum and other tracks and my uncle, Wally Pankratz, won the first CRA race in 1951. It was funny, when I won my first CRA race [at Cajon Speedway in 1978], some papers said it took 27 years for me to win my second one.

“My parents separated, so I never went with my father to a race, but I heard a lot about it. He held the track record at the Coliseum and he drove with Sam Hanks and Johnnie Parsons, all the top guys. He quit after a bad accident and had a career building race cars.”

Young Wally was playing football at the time, not giving much thought to becoming a racer until after getting his degree in history from Idaho State.

“When I got out of school, it just seemed racing was the thing to do and once I tried it, I found out I was pretty good so I’m still at it. I had a lot of help from friends of my dad.”

Saturday night, Pankratz will drive his own midget, a sprint car for Ed Ulyate and a super-modified for Don West.

“It’s no big deal,” he said “I’ve driven all three on one night before. I’ve won in all three. People basically think of me as a midget driver, but it was super-modifieds that first brought me to the limelight. I won a big race in Sandusky, Ohio, where Tim Richmond was the track champion.”

All three are open-wheel cars, but there are major differences.

A midget has a six-foot wheelbase, weighs 900 pounds and can be powered by a variety of engines ranging from 122 to 184 cubic inches. A sprint car has a seven-foot wheelbase, weighs 1,400 pounds and has a 360-cubic inch engine. Surprisingly, their speeds are quite close.

Super-modifieds are a wild breed, much more stretched out than a sprint car, powered by a 400-cubic inch V-8, and so unbalanced that no two tires are the same size.

“A modified can be evil,” Pankratz said. “They’re hideously expensive because there basically aren’t any rules. You can hang just about anything on one to make it faster.”

And they are fast. WSMRA officials estimate they will be lapping Irwindale’s half-mile in close to 15 seconds, which is 120 mph.

Pankratz got his most dramatic victory in 1987 at Madera Speedway in Central California, where he ended the late Bill Vukovich III’s USAC record of seven consecutive super-modified wins. Vukovich had tied A.J. Foyt for the record and was hoping to break it at Madera.

“It wasn’t safe for me to drive through Fresno after that,” Pankratz said with a laugh. The Vukovichs are Fresno’s most famous racing family.

Even more nerve-racking might have been an experience last year.

“I was racing against my daughter, Randi, in a midget and we were going side by side,” Pankratz said. “I was having a tough time getting around her and I had to race her pretty hard. About halfway through the corner, I thought, ‘Oh, man, if something happens to her, my ex-wife will come down out of the stands and kill me.’ ”

Randi is an accomplished three-quarter midget racer who occasionally drives full midgets.

Although Pankratz seems ready to race anywhere they throw a green flag, he still considers the sport a hobby.

“I’m a finish carpenter by trade,” he said. “I tried racing full-time for a couple of years in the ‘70s and really enjoyed it. It was kind of a neat ego trip, but now when I drive for someone else, I get paid instead of doing the paying. One nice thing about being a carpenter is that I can pick up and leave for a race when I feel like it.”

Jason Leffler, USAC Silver Crown and midget champion from Long Beach, will race in the midget feature, then catch a plane for Nazareth, Pa., where he will test Tuesday for the seat in Roger Penske’s car left open when Al Unser Jr. broke an ankle last Sunday in a CART race at Homestead, Fla. Also testing for the Marlboro team is Gonzalo Rodriguez, a Formula 3000 driver from Uruguay.

THE PHOENIX WEEKEND

When the schedules were set, NASCAR Craftsman Trucks were programmed as support races for CART and Indy Racing League open-wheel cars. That’s why the trucks run Saturday and the Andrettis, Unsers, Cheevers, et al., on Sunday.

Last week, when CART opened its season at Homestead, racing officials agree that Mike Wallace’s truck victory on Saturday was seen by more people in person than Greg Moore’s CART win on Sunday.

This week it is the IRL’s turn for comparisons.

A NASCAR doubleheader with Craftsman Trucks and Winston West is scheduled Saturday at Phoenix International Raceway. A Pep Boys IRL race, the MCI WorldCom 200, is set for Sunday on the same mile oval.

Interest in the IRL is heightened because it is an important turn on the road to the Indianapolis 500, still the world’s most famous open-wheel race. After Phoenix, only one race, May 1 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., remains before cars converge on Indy for practice May 15.

Scott Sharp won last year’s Phoenix race, and he and Kelley Racing teammate Mark Dismore were the quickest in tests last month. Dismore hit 175.627 mph, Sharp 175.593. The IRL record for normally aspirated engines is 172.753 by Jeff Ward last year.

Eddie Cheever, defending Indy 500 winner and the IRL points leader, is a native of Phoenix but has never won on his hometown track. He won the season opener at Orlando, Fla.

There are 52 cars entered, with 28 drivers listed. Making their IRL debuts will be Jaques Lazier, younger brother of 1996 Indy 500 winner Buddy Lazier, and CART and Formula One veteran Roberto Moreno.

LAST LAPS

Cajon Speedway, the only track to have held a Featherlite Southwest Tour event in every year of the series, will host the Coors Light 125 Saturday night on the repaved three-eighths-mile oval in El Cajon. Unusual stat: There has not been a single pass for the lead in a Southwest Tour race at Cajon since the 1995 race, when Craig Raudman went by Lance Hooper on the 63rd lap. That means there have been 342 circuits of the track without a lead change.

Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino will open Saturday night under new management. One of the oldest tracks in the country--a quarter-mile paved oval on the National Orange Show grounds--the opening night program will feature late-model stock cars and Figure 8 racing. California Motorsports Corp. is the new promoter.

Formula Fords will be spotlighted Saturday and Sunday when the Vintage Auto Racing Assn. holds a 30th anniversary party at Buttonwillow Raceway Park on the date of the cars’ first race in California. . . . Second- generation driver Rocky Moran, 19, a student at Irvine Valley College, won his first professional race Sunday in the opening round of the Barber Dodge series in Sebring, Fla.

Motor racing has two drivers among the top five money-making athletes, according to Forbes magazine’s 1999 survey. Former Formula One champion Michael Schumacher was No. 3, behind Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, and seven-time Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt was No. 5. Hockey player Sergei Fedorov was fourth. After Earnhardt came Arnold Palmer, Oscar De La Hoya, Wayne Gretzky, Greg Norman, Andre Agassi and Mark McGwire.

Chip Hanauer, the winningest driver in unlimited hydroplane history, is coming out of retirement to drive Miss PICO for Fred Leland of Seattle. Hanauer, 44, who has been away from racing for nearly three years after a series of accidents, tested the boat on Lake Washington and expects to be ready for the season opener May 23 at Lake Havasu, Ariz. The unlimiteds will be on San Diego’s Mission Bay on Sept. 19.

Penske Motorsports has dropped its plans to build a 120,000-seat speedway near Denver International Airport after objections were raised by area residents and the Federal Aviation Administration. . . . The late Eddie Sachs, who twice sat on the pole at the Indianapolis 500, and Herb Porter, legendary chief mechanic and engine builder, have been named to the Auto Racing Hall of Fame at Indianapolis.

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This Weekend’s Races

WINSTON CUP, Primestar 500

* When: Today, first-round qualifying, 1:30 p.m. Saturday, second-round qualifying, 8:45 a.m. Sunday, race (Channel 2, 11 a.m.).

* Where: Texas Motor Speedway (quad-oval, 1.5 miles, 24-degree banking in turns) at Fort Worth.

* Defending champion: Mark Martin.

* Next race: Food City 500, April 11, Bristol, Tenn.

BUSCH GRAND NATIONAL, Coca-Cola 300

* When: Today, second-round qualifying, 12:30 p.m. Saturday, race (Channel 2, 10 a.m.).

* Where: Texas Motor Speedway (quad-oval, 1.5 miles, 24-degree banking in turns) at Fort Worth.

* Defending champion: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

* Next race: NASCAR Busch 320, April 3, Nashville.