Time Off Is the Pits for Stewart

By SHAV GLICK

April 21, 2000 12 AM PT

Winston Cup drivers have not had a week off since Feb. 13, so what do they do with no race this weekend?

Tony Stewart, who would rather race than eat, will be at Las Vegas to serve as crew chief for one of his Indy Racing League drivers, Jack Miller, in the Vegas Indy 300. Stewart and Larry Curry, the crew chief when Stewart won the IRL championship in 1997, own Tri-Star Motorsports.

“It’s the next best thing to driving,” Stewart said. “I’ll probably have the busiest weekend of anybody in NASCAR. I thought it might be a little more relaxing, but Larry threw a surprise curveball at me with a driver addition [Miller]. I’ll be doing the same thing, basically, that I was doing back at the IRL season opener in Orlando [Fla.], just a different driver.”

At Orlando, Stewart crewed for Robby Unser. Curry will be handling crew duties at Las Vegas for Jaret Schroeder, Tri-Star’s regular driver.

“It’ll be nice to be out there with the IRL guys and see my buddies who I’ve raced with, but I’m not sure I really want to be in the crew chief role again,” Stewart said. “When I’m there, I do all the roles, owner, crew chief, engineer, you name it.”

Stewart, 1999 Winston Cup rookie of the year, acknowledged that working in the pits makes him better appreciate what Greg Zipadelli does for him in the No. 20 Home Depot Pontiac.

“I’ll tell you this, it makes me respect Greg even more than I already did,” Stewart said. “I see things the way he sees things. It makes me think about things from a different perspective, and I think that’ll help our team later this year. It’s a pretty tough task.”

Michael Waltrip will spend Easter Sunday and most of the week relaxing with his family on their 90-acre spread on Lake Norman in North Carolina, but most of the time he will probably be resting from having run in the Boston Marathon last Monday--all 26 miles.

His time was 4 hours 34 minutes, more than two hours behind the winner, Kenya’s Elijah Lagat, but he finished.

“Somewhere about the 16-mile mark,” he said, “I began to ask myself what good it would do to run 10 more miles, but I decided to push on. It was my second marathon. I ran one back in February at Kiawah Island in South Carolina and finished in 4:14, so I thought I’d do better in Boston, but I didn’t train right. For Kiawah, I trained to run 26 miles. For Boston, I was only doing five miles a day because I was racing every weekend, but I’m proud to have done it.

“There’s nothing at all that compares a marathon to what I do in the race car. One is for fun and the other is my job. While I enjoy running and I love my job, there is a switch that goes on once I get in the race car that separates me from people who think they know what it’s like to race 500 miles at 200 mph.

“I have people come up to me all the time and say, ‘I’ve done the Richard Petty Driving Experience, I know what it’s like for you.’ Well, that’s as silly as me going up to one of those Kenya dudes and saying, ‘I know what it’s like.’ The heck they do, and the heck I do.

“Running to me is a personal thing. I feel like I’m in a shell when I run. It wasn’t important where I finished. I was running in a big pack and if I would have had a little kick to give it at the finish, I probably could have passed a thousand or so of them.”

For the record, he finished 14,315th among 17,813 starters.

Johnny Benson will be a fan during his time off, traveling to England for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

“I went to Spain two years ago and had so much fun that I wanted to go back,” he said. “Those cars are amazing. What I couldn’t believe the last time we were there is how a Formula One car can go from almost 200 mph down to almost a complete stop in less than a second.”

Then there’s Kenny Wallace, whose plan may be the most popular. He plans to do nothing.

“I’m so busy with sponsor functions and team responsibilities during the season that when I have an off weekend, I do what I want to do, and that means nothing,” said the younger of the racing Wallace brothers.

“Every morning at the track, I wake up to the sound of engines blaring in my ear. I don’t need an alarm clock. I get up with the roar of race car motors from the garage. This weekend, it’ll be nice to wake up to the whistling from the birds that have moved into the chimney of my house. That’ll start my day off right.

“Once I wake up, I just want to play with my kids and celebrate Easter with my family.”

THE NASCAR PHENOMENON

What is the secret of the Winston Cup’s success? This is how Sports Business Journal explained it:

“You can start with the excitement, watching 3,500-pound high-tech ground missiles being propelled around racetracks at speeds approaching 200 mph. But there’s more, much more. Here’s a sports organization that has never experienced a lockout or a strike by its athletes. Furthermore, NASCAR’s drivers don’t choke their coaches, beat their wives, get arrested for using or selling drugs, brag about having children out of wedlock or carry guns.”

INDY RACING LEAGUE

Chip Ganassi and his Team Target drivers, Juan Montoya and Jimmy Vasser, will be at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday for the Vegas Indy 300, but they won’t be in their race cars.

“We’ll be there scouting, to see what the opposition looks like for Indy,” said Ganassi, the CART championship car owner who has entered his drivers in the Indianapolis 500 May 28.

There had been speculation that Ganassi might run in Las Vegas to familiarize his team with drivers they will face at Indy, but he said he did not feel it was necessary.

The snow-caused postponement of the CART race April 9 at Nazareth, Pa., to May 27 means the Ganassi pair will race there on Saturday, then fly to Indianapolis for Sunday’s 500. Indy qualifying is a week earlier so it should pose no problem.

That leaves the Vegas 300 open to the usual cast of IRL regulars, from 1999 champion Greg Ray to former Indy 500 winners Al Unser Jr., Eddie Cheever and Buddy Lazier.

Sam Schmidt, a hometown driver who won last year’s Las Vegas race, is in an advanced rehabilitation unit of the Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, recovering from spine injuries suffered in a racing accident Jan. 6. He is paralyzed from the shoulders down.

“Since my injury, I have learned much about the tremendous needs of people suffering from spinal cord injuries,” said Schmidt, whose friends have established the Sam Schmidt Foundation to support spinal cord injury research and funding.

Also on Saturday’s Las Vegas program is the Orleans 150 for Winston West cars.

ON FURTHER REVIEW

Johnny Miller, not Tomy Drissi, won the Trans-Am race late Sunday at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Drissi, driving a Ford Mustang Cobra, was declared the winner at race’s end, but when officials looked at the tape, it was determined that the race should have ended a lap earlier because of a 60-minute time limit.

Miller’s Chevrolet Corvette was involved in a four-car wreck on lap 35, the “extra lap,” but when results reverted to Lap 34, he was first, Chris Neville second and Drissi third. Willy T. Ribbs, originally second, slid all the way to seventh in the recount.

LAST LAPS

Tony Jones, who survived a frightening crash in last week’s Sprint Car Racing Assn. main event at Perris Auto Speedway, is expected to be back Saturday night in a new car built by his father, sprint car hall of fame driver Bubby Jones. Tony Jones won three weeks ago at Perris and is third in SCRA points, behind defending champion Richard Griffin and Rip Williams, who is one victory shy of a record 50 in main events. Saturday night’s race is the makeup for a March 4 rainout.

Late model stock car driver Todd Burns of Riverside is on a roll at Irwindale Speedway. In two events, he has set fast time, won the trophy dash and main event. He will be going for No. 3 Saturday night.

Kenny Roberts Jr., with a second-place finish last week in the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, Japan, moved into the world motorcycle championship lead in pursuit of the title won by his father in 1978, ’79 and ’80. A week earlier, Roberts Jr. won the Malaysian GP on his Suzuki.

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This Week’s Races

CRAFTSMAN TRUCKS

Line-X 225K

* When: Today, qualifying, 4 p.m.; Saturday, race (ESPN, noon)

* Where: Portland (Ore.) International Raceway (permanent road course, 1.95 miles, nine turns).

* Race distance: 142.35 miles, 73 laps.

* Defending champion: Greg Biffle.

* Next race: Ram Tough 200, May 7, Madison, Ill.

INDY RACING LEAGUE

Vegas Indy 300

* When: Today, qualifying, 1 p.m. (ESPN2, 2:30 p.m., tape); Saturday, race (Channel 7, 12:30 p.m.)