They’ll Attempt to Reach for Stars

Nothing surprising about Lyn St. James driving a race car. She does it all the time.

But John Elway? Robin Yount? A sure-to-be NFL hall of famer and a recently inducted member of baseball’s hallowed shrine?

Yup, Elway and Yount, a couple of Valley boys who made it big, will be among the celebrities driving identically prepared Toyota Celicas in Saturday’s Toyota pro-celebrity race, always the fan favorite among the supporting events at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Elway is the longtime former quarterback of the Denver Broncos, Yount the longtime shortstop-outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers.

They will be trying to beat St. James, and such show biz names as Ashley Judd, George Lucas, Melissa Joan Hart, Alyson Hannigan, Josh Brolin and Joshua Morrow.

The pro-celebrity race, a 10-lap charity event that benefits children’s hospitals of Southern California, will be the first real competition of the weekend, going off at 12:45 p.m. Saturday. Then, after CART drivers have qualified for Sunday’s main event, Toyota Atlantic drivers will take to the newly configured 1.97-mile street course for 37 laps in Toyota-powered open-wheel cars.

Sunday’s schedule has two races sandwiching the CART headliner, the Dayton Indy Lights at 10:20 a.m. and the Johnson Controls Trans-Am sports coupe race at 3:45 p.m.

As usual, the pros in the pro-celebrity race will give the celebrities a head start, and Yount, although a celebrity, has enough seat time in race cars to have been designated a pro, along with St. James, former Formula One driver Derek Daley, and extreme snowboarder Shaun Palmer, who won the race last year.

Daniel Wheldon of Newport Beach will be shooting for his second victory this season in the Toyota Atlantic race. He and Buddy Rice of Phoenix split the doubleheader opener last month at Homestead, Fla., and Rice, with more laps led, has a two-point lead over Wheldon.

Dorricott Racing will be protecting its hard-earned turf in Indy Lights.

Dorricott drivers Oriol Servia, Casey Mears of Bakersfield, and Phillipp Peter finished first, second and third in the 1999 standings, the first such sweep in the 14-year history of the series.

Servia has moved on to CART champ cars and will be driving in the main event for Cal Wells’ PPI team Sunday, and Peter, last year’s Long Beach winner, has moved on as well. But Mears is back in a Dorricott car, teaming with rookies Townsend Bell of Costa Mesa and Jason Bright of Australia.

Indy lights are similar to CART champ cars but are, as the name implies, lighter. And all are powered by General Motors V-6 engines.

The twist in the Trans-Am race is that Paul Gentilozzi, two-time defending series and Long Beach champion, not only has switched cars--he did that last year too, jumping from Chevy Corvette to Ford Mustang Cobra--but has gone outside the U.S. to do it. Gentilozzi is driving a Jaguar XKR in a series long dominated by Detroit iron.