Season Was Disappointing From Start to Finish

Motor racing’s 2001 season will close today with an unplanned race in frigid Loudon, N.H., and not a day too soon.

This has not been a good year for racing, on or off the track.

It started badly with Dale Earnhardt’s shocking death in the first race of the season, the Daytona 500, and never recovered. Not even record crowds, rising TV ratings and a fourth championship for stock car racing’s glamour boy, Jeff Gordon, could erase the memory of that No. 3 Chevrolet smacking the wall less than a half-mile from the finish line of NASCAR’s showcase race.

“We have lost Dale Earnhardt,” NASCAR president Mike Helton said to a stunned nation.

The loss is still being felt and it will probably swell when the racing crowd gathers in Daytona Beach for next February’s 500.

Earnhardt’s death led to a nearly season-long argument on the use of head-and-neck safety devices, a stubborn NASCAR finally yielding in October and mandating their use.

Then the fallout from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 only served to stretch an already too-long season.

Today’s New Hampshire 300, postponed from Sept. 16, is nothing the drivers or the teams wanted, but in today’s commercial world, it had to be run to save NASCAR untold millions on its TV contract, and to save the promoters of New Hampshire International Speedway from refunding money to thousands of ticket holders.

“Physically, I’m drained,” said driver Rusty Wallace. “I’m tired. I’m tired of racing. I was ready for a vacation after Atlanta [last weekend] and now we’ve got to go to New Hampshire. I’ve never gone to a race before where I’ve got to start on points [no qualifying], have an 8 a.m. practice in the cold and then race at noon.”

With Gordon already the Winston Cup champion, only second place is at stake, with Tony Stewart leading Ricky Rudd by 26 points and Sterling Marlin by 42.

It’s not the way the racers wanted to spend the day after Thanksgiving.

And NASCAR, despite its problems, was by far the most successful of America’s racing organizations. CART, the Indy Racing League and the National Hot Rod Assn. all suffered disillusionment or disappointment.

CART, the haughty open-wheel group that seemed more intent on becoming Formula One Jr. than anything else, shot itself in the foot so often that it seemed to run out of toes.

The first blow was losing its race in Brazil, home of the majority of its drivers, in a political miscalculation. Then it lost another race in Texas because of poor planning. The race was canceled about half an hour before it was to start when drivers complained of dizziness during practice on the high-banked oval.

It apparently had not occurred to CART officials to test its cars on the track earlier, even after former chief steward Wally Dallenbach had declared the track unsafe for its cars.

And when things started looking up, disaster struck. The excitement over enthusiastic crowds for new races at new tracks in Germany and England was muted when Alex Zanardi, one of CART’s most popular and best-known drivers, lost both his legs in a racing accident.

CART’s future is in jeopardy as well, its engine builders--Ford, Toyota and Honda--having indicated displeasure with new engine formulas.

After an announced change from turbocharged to normally aspirated engines in 2003, Honda withdrew and Ford said it would not build a non-turbo power plant. Toyota, on the other hand, said it was out of the turbocharged business, leaving CART with no engine builders for 2003.

Indecision over a TV contract, schedule-expanding foreign involvement and arguments over engine rules has prompted defection among major team sponsors.

Marlboro has asked Roger Penske, CART’s strongest owner, to leave for the IRL so it can be part of the Indianapolis 500.

Miller beer, another Philip Morris product, made a similar request of Bobby Rahal to run in the 500, and Target is already part of the 500 with Chip Ganassi’s drivers. If Penske leaves, as seems almost certain, it could have a domino effect on a number of other teams.

This would seem to be playing into the IRL’s hand, yet Tony George’s breakaway group is suffering from growing pains. It has had charismatic champions in Scott Sharp, Greg Ray and Sam Hornish Jr., yet none has captured the public’s attention. The perception that the IRL is a second-level racing organization was heightened when CART drivers, plus Winston Cup driver Stewart, took the first seven places in this year’s Indy 500. And the IRL’s first finisher was a 45-year-old Chilean, Eliseo Salazar.

With CART champion Gil de Ferran and Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves joining the IRL with Penske, and others likely to follow, many of the long-suffering IRL regulars may find themselves on the outside looking in. Or, as IRL team owner Tom Kelley said to his fellow owners, “Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.”

The NHRA celebrated a successful drag racing season, but lost its biggest financial backer, Winston, when the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., choosing to remain with NASCAR, withdrew its support to comply with the Master Settlement Agreement.

A new sponsor is expected to be revealed next week, but it is doubtful that any other company will pour the resources into the NHRA as Winston did for 27 years through RJR’s Sports Marketing Enterprises.

It’s more than $2.3-million points payout this year was only the beginning of the money it spent on personnel, public relations and promotion of drag racing.

The new sponsor will have a tough act to follow.

Anyway, see you next year, and let’s hope it all turns out better for everyone.

Sprint Cars

Ventura’s Cory Kruseman ended the Sprint Car Racing Assn. season the same way he began it--with a victory. For the first time in the organization’s long history, Kruseman held the points lead throughout the 43-race season. He won a record 15 main events, ending with the 50-lap Jack Kindoll Classic last Saturday night at Perris Auto Speedway.

“I keep saying that it’s been a dream season because I don’t know how to put it in any other terms,” said Kruseman, who operates a sprint car driving school at Ventura Raceway between races.

” ... The guys that work their butts off all week to make it possible for me to come out and be the hero, those are the guys who won this championship.”

Kruseman finished with 2,620 points, followed by three-time champion Richard Griffin with 2,290; Troy Rutherford, 2,214; Mike Kirby, 2,052; and John Scott, 1,977.

Last Laps

Seven-time supercross champion Jeremy McGrath will be part of a celebrity-laden three-day motorcycle party this weekend at the L.A. County Raceway in Palmdale. Other advertised riders include Jeff Ward, Rick Johnson, Eric Kehoe, Mike Bell and Jeff Emig.

Six races Saturday, from minis to vets, set the stage for Sunday’s main event, a 90-minute tag-team affair for professional racers, stunt men and extreme sports competitors.

Proceeds from “A Day in the Dirt” will go to the Steve McQueen Memorial Fund for Boys Republic and the Palliative Care Unit at UCLA.

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Road racing great Jacky Ickx and three NASCAR legends, Alan Kulwicki, Tim Richmond and Glen Wood were among six men selected for induction into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Ala. Others included car builder Ettore Bugatti and Formula One champion Denis Hulme of New Zealand.

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Teresa Earnhardt has been named NASCAR Winston Cup Illustrated’s person of the year. Since her husband’s death, she has continued to run a successful three-car team for Dale Earnhardt, Inc. ... Robby Gordon, who has been driving the No. 31 Chevrolet for Richard Childress as a replacement for the injured Mike Skinner, has been named as the team driver next year after it was announced that Skinner would not return.

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The eighth-mile Irwindale Speedway drag strip has been given official sanction as a National Hot Rod Assn. member track.... Robert Willis of Claremont High was named winner of the Castrol GTX Top Tech award and was rewarded by spending a day working with funny car champion John Force’s crew during the NHRA Finals at Pomona Raceway.

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This Week

WINSTON CUP

New Hampshire 300

When: Today, race (Channel 4, 10 a.m.)

Where: New Hampshire International Speedway (oval, 1.058 miles, 12-degree banking in turns), Loudon, N.H.

Race distance: 317.4 miles, 300 laps.

Last race: Jeff Gordon clinched the season title with a sixth-place finish as Bobby Labonte, the 2000 series champion, won the NAPA 500 in Hampton, Ga.

2000 winner: Jeff Burton. On the net: www.nascar.com.