Chance to Take Road to Indy Comes Too Late for Pankratz

One of the perks Wally Pankratz got for winning the U.S. Auto Club’s Western States midget

“I told them I didn’t think a 55-year-old rookie was going to happen,” said Pankratz, who became the oldest champion in USAC history when he narrowly beat Bobby Bruce for the title in the season’s final race at Irwindale Speedway. “The only way I’m going to Indy is Route 66.”

Pankratz, a former football player at Fullerton Junior College and Idaho State who lives in Orange, did accept the offer, however, then turned it over to his daughter, Randi, a regular in USAC’s three-quarter midget division.

“Twenty years ago, I would have jumped at the chance,” said Pankratz, who did not become a race car driver until he was 27 because of his mother’s objections. “When I won 24 main events in Joe Lynch’s sprint car in 1978, running all over the country, I thought maybe I was on my way to Indy. But then I broke my leg at Mesa Marin and sat out most of the next year.

“I came close again in 1980. We went into Sandusky, Ohio, where Tim Richmond was the track champion, and we beat him. That was the year Richmond was rookie of the year at Indy, but that was as close as we got.”

At the USAC awards banquet last week in Indianapolis, Pankratz also collected $11,000 as champion driver and car owner. He will receive more accolades when USAC holds its Western States series banquet Jan. 20 at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park.

“My midget will have a new look when the 2001 season starts,” he said after returning home. “Instead of the traditional yellow No. 8, it’ll be a wild red with silver leaf No. 1 on the sides.

“I don’t know how serious we’ll be about winning the championship again because I’m also going to drive a sprint car for Larry Brown and a supermodified for a team out of Portland. Racing, to me, is fun and I want to keep having fun as long as I can. As long as I have the Van Dynes working with me, I’ll be just fine.”

Stewart Van Dyne, who built the engines for the late Mark Donohue when he won the 1972 Indy 500, is Pankratz’s motor man. Stewart’s son, Tres, is the crew chief.

“I never think I’m old until someone reminds me that I’m older than many of the fathers of a lot of kids I race against,” Pankratz said. “I still feel like I could get back on the football field and knock down a few passes.”

Pankratz’s father, Bob, was also a race driver but was better known as a car builder. His driving career ended when he suffered severe head injuries in a 1948 accident in Bainbridge, Ohio.

“I don’t remember much about it because I was only 2 1/2 at the time, but from that day on, my mother wouldn’t let me think of racing,” Pankratz said. “My dad’s sprint car hit a fence and came back on the track where he and Lyle Dickey crashed together. My dad was thrown out on the track and was unconscious for three months. He never drove again because he couldn’t get a medical release.

“One of my biggest thrills last week [at Indianapolis] was when a fellow came up to me and said he’d seen a car in the museum that was built by Bob Pankratz. He wanted to know if we were related. It was the black No. 2 sprinter that Troy Ruttman drove when he won 17 or 18 races around 1950.”

BANQUET TIME

Back when Andy Granatelli and his press agent, Bill Dredge, were hawking STP, the sponsor of cars driven by Richard Petty, Mario Andretti and others, the story around motor racing circles was that if man ever reached the moon, the first thing he’d see would be an STP decal.

Later, when big ol’ Andy began appearing in his own commercials wearing a trench coat, he was named the most recognizable figure in motor racing.

That was several decades ago, but Granatelli is still around, full of ideas and pizazz. He will surface Saturday night when the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Assn. honors him at its All-American awards banquet for “giving the sport its broadest visibility at a time when it wasn’t even shown on TV and for being a loud and persistent advocate for safety in the sport.”

Also being honored are the 12 members of the 2000 AARWBA All-American team, although it is unlikely that many will appear, since most teams are involved in testing. The team: Bobby Labonte, Tony Stewart, stock cars; Gil de Ferran, Buddy Lazier, open-wheel; John Force, Gary Scelzi, drag racing; Jeff Green, Steve Kinser, short track; Brian Simo, Allan McNish, road racing; and Scott Dixon, Buddy Rice, at large.

The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a reception at the NHRA Motorsports Museum on the Fairplex grounds, followed by dinner at the adjacent Sheraton Suites Fairplex. Tickets for the public, at $60, will be available at the door.

WINTERNATIONALS COMING

Chasing John Force has become one of the most frustrating things that can happen to a National Hot Rod Assn. funny car driver.

Rivals have decided that the best way to chase him may be to copy him. Force, 10-time funny car champion, was the first to field a two-car team, adding Tony Pedregon to his arsenal five years ago.

Don Prudhomme is the latest to join the ranks, having signed Tommy Johnson Jr. as a Skoal Racing teammate of Ron Capps. This brings the total to six multi-car teams that will line up for the 41st annual season-opening AutoZone Winternationals, Feb. 1-3, at the Pomona Fairplex.

With his team expanding--Prudhomme also has a top-fuel car driven by Larry Dixon--the Snake is building a new headquarters shop in Indianapolis. He will also keep his shop in Vista and his home in Rancho Santa Fe, but once the schedule takes the team east all three cars will be maintained in the Indianapolis facility.

“I’m too much a Southern Californian to move, but more and more, Indy has become the hub for drag racing, as much as it is for oval-track racing,” said Prudhomme, who retired from a Hall of Fame driving career after the 1994 season before becoming a car owner.

“I thought I’d retired and now I’m expanding my team. I must be nuts. We had to get a second car to stay competitive. When we started, we thought we could get all the info we needed by having a top-fuel and a funny car, but we found out the two were too different, so here we are with two funny cars.”

Johnson and Capps will be in identically prepared Chevrolet Camaros, except that Johnson’s will be blue and Capps’ green.

“We aren’t going to have a No. 1 and No. 2 team,” Prudhomme said. “We are going to have a green team and a blue team and there is going to be some serious competition whenever they meet on race day.”

Johnson, 32, is a veteran of both funny car and top-fuel cars, as is Capps.

“I’ve always had my eye on Tommy,” said Prudhomme. “When we found he was free to make a deal, it was a slam dunk.”

Johnson’s decision to join Prudhomme left Chuck Etchells without a teammate for Jim Epler, but not for long. Etchells, who had hoped to sign Johnson, decided to come out of a two-year retirement and drive one of his own Camaros.

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He won’t say yes but he won’t say no either, so don’t be surprised if Force shows up at Pomona with his long-anticipated top-fuel car.

The driver would probably be Cory McClenathan, who has been unemployed since Joe Gibbs shut down his drag racing team last year, or Gary Ormsby Jr., whose father won the NHRA top-fuel championship in 1989. Young Ormsby drove an alcohol dragster last year, winning two national events.

Jimmy Prock, a former crew chief for Joe Amato who recently left Don Schumacher’s team, is expected to tune the Force top-fuel entry.

LAST LAPS

The Jeremy McGrath Show, a.k.a. the ET Supercross Series, heads to San Diego for its second round Saturday night at Qualcomm Stadium before returning to Edison Field for a second sellout performance Jan. 20. All 64,000 seats have been sold for the San Diego motos. . . . Suzuki road racer Mat Mladin was given the American Motorcyclist Assn.’s pro-athlete-of-the-year award--its highest individual honor--after he’d won his second consecutive superbike title. Mladin, an Australian, has a home in Chino Hills.