Rice’s Toyota Atlantic Win Is Second of Season

Toyota Atlantic drivers Buddy Rice of Phoenix and Daniel Wheldon of Newport Beach provided a tasty appetizer for today’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach over the temporary street course on Saturday.

It could have lasted longer but then it was only an appetizer and it was intense while it lasted.

Rice won the 63-mile race for Toyota-powered open-wheel cars by a comfortable 17 seconds. But that was only after Wheldon, and then later Wheldon’s PPI teammate, Andrew Bordine, suffered gearbox problems and had to limp through the second half, each with a gear missing.

The victory was the second this season for Rice, who had split the season-opening doubleheader with Wheldon.

Rice, starting third, beat pole winner Wheldon into the first turn, then was passed by Wheldon four laps later and the dicing went on for the next nine laps, Wheldon maintaining a slight lead over Rice, who was only inches ahead of Bordine.

When Wheldon began slowing, Bordine increased the pressure on Rice but eventually fell back and was passed for second by David Rutledge on the second-to-last lap of the 32-lap race, settling for third.

Rice averaged 82.619 mph.

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The Toyota pro-celebrity race, normally a fender-banging crowd pleaser, was a sedate affair, actor Josh Brolin winning from the pole.

Brolin had only one anxious moment, in the first turn on the first lap, when Don Simons drove into the side of Brolin’s car.

“I got out of that and got a clean road ahead and I was lucky,” said Brolin, who averaged 64.022 mph in the 10-lap race.

Another actor, Joshua Morrow, was second, followed by Simons, who bought his ride in last year’s charity auction.

Former driver Derek Daly was fourth and, had the race gone another lap or two, probably would have caught Brolin. As a pro, however, Daly started half a minute behind the celebrities. Snowboarder Shaun Palmer, last year’s winner driving as a pro this year, was fifth, followed by baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount.

All drivers were in identically prepared Toyota Celica GTS cars. The race earned about $20,000 for Southern California children’s hospitals.

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Dan Gurney, a Southland racing legend and a driving force in the founding of Long Beach street racing, has put his formidable collection of racing gear up for auction on the Internet.

Gurney said the auction, which began Saturday on www.RaceSearch.com, would involve everything from nuts and bolts to entire cars. He has committed 5% of the profits to Hoag Cancer Center in Newport Beach.

The online auction is expected to continue for three months or more, with newly offered items replacing those that are sold.

As a driver, Gurney won in Indy cars, Formula One, NASCAR and major sports car events. As a car builder and owner, he won at Indianapolis and in F1. His All American Racers was the development team for Toyota’s racing engine through last season in CART.

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Jonny Kane of Ireland won the pole for today’s Dayton Indy Lights race and Brian Simo of Carlsbad was fastest qualifier for the Trans-Am.

Kane had a fast lap of 94.269 mph, beating Scott Dixon of New Zealand, who qualified at 93.572.

Simo, driving a Ford Mustang Cobra, turned a lap at 85.313 mph.