Stewart Big on Midget Racing

The Daytona 500 will open the Winston Cup season in less than a month and Tony Stewart has been tabbed as the driver to beat by four-time champion Jeff Gordon, but Stewart has left little doubt that he would rather be racing midgets on Saturday nights than the high-profile NASCAR stock cars on Sundays.

Stewart took time off from testing Joe Gibbs’ Home Depot Pontiac last weekend to win the Chili Bowl midget race in Tulsa, Okla., an event that annually draws every open-wheel, short-track driver of note in the country. It was the latest addition to Stewart’s collection of prestigious midget wins, which includes the 2000 Turkey Night Grand Prix at Irwindale Speedway.

After the Chili Bowl win, the former triple U.S. Auto Club champion explained why he kept chasing his dream.

“This style of racing is fun because you come here and unload your car and you race,” he said. “You go out, have dinner together and drag down the road to the next place and do it again all over next week.

“There is no politics. You didn’t once hear anybody [at Tulsa] complaining that somebody’s body style had more down force and less drag than anybody else. That’s why it’s fun. You don’t hear anybody complain about anything, you just go race.”

Cory Kruseman, Sprint Car Racing Assn. champion from Ventura and 2000 Chili Bowl winner, finished third, behind Kevin Doty. Danny Lasoski, World of Outlaws champion, was seventh, J. J. Yeley 11th, Jason Leffler 14th, Richard Griffin 15th and Troy Rutherford 19th in the 24-car main event. Wally Pankratz, USAC western regional champion in 2000, missed the main by one spot, finishing seventh in his semifinal heat with only six qualifying.

Now it’s back to Daytona for Stewart and more practice, something he sees as rather unimportant and uninteresting.

“I’ve always thought [Daytona testing] was a waste of time, unless you were a lower team looking for a sponsor and some fast laps during testing would help you out. For a driver, you go out there and you shift three times. Once you leave pit lane, you just go wide open and you leave it there. You get an out lap and two timed laps and then you bring it in the garage. That’s all we do for three days. You’re just a passenger out there. The real work is being done by the engineers back in the garage.

“NASCAR has proven time and again that they’re willing to change the rules at any time for any or no reason. So what we’re running right now may not be what we come back here with [for the 500 on Feb. 17]. I don’t get too excited about rules anymore because they change them at any time”

Anybody know where there’s a good midget race for Stewart?

Farewell to Buster

For more than 30 years, Buster Couch was the most recognizable person in drag racing.

That’s because Buster was the man in the middle, the guy who flipped the switch that sent 6,000-horsepower top fuel and funny cars down the quarter-mile racing strip at National Hot Rod Assn. events from Pomona to Englishtown, N.J..

He retired from the starting line after the 1995 season, turning the duties over to Rick Stewart, and took a more comfortable position in the staging tower, serving as a control monitor.

Last Saturday, the 6-foot-3, 250-plus pound Couch was preparing for the start of another NHRA season when his heart gave out. At 66, he died at his home, near Atlanta.

“People ask me what it’s like to take Buster’s place, and I have to correct them,” Stewart said from his home in Dallas. “Nobody takes Buster’s place. I’m just carrying on for him. I know that every time I flip that switch, he’s watching, and if I mess up he’ll pick me up and throw me over the guard rail.”

Couch was a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth and always sort of regretted that drag racing became respectable.

“Fighting was as much a part of racing as going fast back in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” he said a few years ago. “Guys used to get mad at everything and the way to settle arguments was usually to start a fight. I kind of miss it.”

NHRA officials estimated that Couch started more than half a million side-by-side races. In his early days, he waved a flag, but Couch was instrumental in development of the Christmas-tree starting device used today.

“Few in the last 50 years epitomized the spirit of NHRA through not only his words, but his actions, the way Buster did,” said Tom Compton, NHRA president.

Added Graham Light, NHRA vice president, “Through all the major contributions Buster made to the NHRA, and in the past few years he was a big assistance in race control with his vast knowledge of the sport, I think his greatest gift may have been his humor. Buster had a unique knack to make people laugh, but still maintain respect.”

What’s With Jeremy?

In nine years of supercross, during which he won seven championships, Jeremy McGrath never finished outside the top 10 more than once a season.

This year, in two races, he ran 13th at Anaheim and 10th at San Diego.

“I made some adjustments after Anaheim, but it seems my timing is still off,” he said. “I am working hard this week to correct those issues and really look forward to being back in Anaheim again Saturday night.”

Edison Field has been good to the 30-year-old from Encinitas. Of the 13 250cc races he has entered there, he has won eight. He also has won two 125cc events at Anaheim.

Larry Brooks, his longtime team manager, insists that it is not lack of conditioning slowing McGrath.

“MC is in the best shape he has ever been in and once his timing kicks in and his mind and body start working together, all the pieces will fall right back into place. We are suffering just a minor hiccup.”

In the meantime, French rider David Vuillemin has scored consecutive victories on his factory Yamaha and leads veteran Honda rider Mike LaRocco, 50-42, going into Round 3 Saturday night.

Fast Laps

Australian driver Andrew Cowan, 22, will replace Mike Dunn in the New York Yankees’ top-fuel dragster for Gwynn/Steinbrenner Racing this season. Dunn, 45, who won 22 NHRA national events, will join the NHRA broadcast team on ESPN.... Irwindale Speedway will host a custom car and motorcycle show and street-legal drag racing Saturday, starting at 2 p.m. It is a program postponed from Nov. 24.

Billy Hamill and Greg Hancock, world Grand Prix speedway motorcycle champions from Southern California, will no longer be teammates in the British Speedway League. Because of a new rule limiting elite teams to two Grand Prix riders, Coventry team president Colin Pratt had to choose between the close friends, and he took Hamill to ride with Andreas Jonsson. Also on the Coventry team, but not GPs, are Billy Janniro and Ryan Fisher. The decision leaves Hancock without a British League ride.

Colin Fleming, 17, of North Hills, and Charlie Kimball, 16, of Camarillo, have been selected for Barber-CART karting scholarships and a full season of racing in the Skip Barber Formula Dodge series.... Racing brothers Ed and Tim Herbst of Las Vegas have drawn the first starting position for the eighth annual SCORE Laughlin Desert Challenge. The brothers, already the winningest drivers in the event’s history, will be in the Terrible Herbst Motorsport Ford F-150. The race is Jan. 26-27.

Passings

Johnny Pawl, 84, one of the last of the Indianapolis 500 riding mechanics, died last Thursday of pancreatic cancer. Pawl, of Crown Point, Ind., also built and raced midget cars from 1930 through 1950. His drivers included Indy 500 winner Johnnie Parsons, Ted Duncan and Paul Russo.