No Triple Crown, but Yeley Dominates

J.J. Yeley didn’t sweep the three U.S. Auto Club open-wheel championships this year, the way Tony Stewart did in 1995, but the Phoenix driver came about as close as he could.

Yeley won the Silver Crown series for dirt-track-type cars, finished second 13 points behind Tracy Hines in sprint cars and has an outside chance of catching Dave Darland in the midget category. With three races remaining, Darland leads, 1,212 points to 1,126.

Next Thursday night, Yeley, Darland, Hines and defending champion Dave Steele will be challenged by newly crowned Winston Cup champion Stewart in the 60th running of the Turkey Night Midget Grand Prix at Irwindale Speedway.

“I’m looking forward -- I’m sure all of us are -- to racing against Tony,” Yeley said during a lull in testing his midget on Irwindale’s half-mile paved oval. “I’ve raced against him before and now that he’s the Winston Cup champion, it adds a lot more excitement to the competition.”

Before Yeley runs his last race this year, he will have taken the green flag in 93 events, and that doesn’t count the Indy Experience two-seaters he drove at every Indy Racing League race.

“I couldn’t get the funding to race in the IRL, so I did the next best thing, I drove fans around the track in modified race cars,” he said.

He won three Silver Crown, seven sprint car and four midget races, with three remaining, Saturday night at Tucson, Thanksgiving at Irwindale and two nights later at Las Vegas.

After conquering USAC and failing to find a seat with the IRL or CART, Yeley hopes to follow other open-wheel champions such as Jeff Gordon, Ryan Newman and Stewart into NASCAR. He has several Busch Grand National tests pending, one in two weeks with Jason Keller’s PPC Racing team.

“With so many CART drivers and sponsors moving into the IRL, it’s going to squeeze out a lot of low-budget teams, and I know what that means,” Yeley said.

Yeley drove for Sinden Racing Services in the 1998 Indianapolis 500 in what he calls “the most memorable experience” of his career, only to have the team disband for lack of funds.

“Any time you drive in the world’s most famous race, it has to be memorable,” he said.

Yeley’s No. 44 made the evening highlights from Indy when he spun on the first turn of the first lap, brushing wheels with Eddie Cheever.

“I started 13th and it was kind of cold and when I went into Turn 1 alongside Cheever, he sort of pinned me down and I got off the throttle. I had been told not to touch the brakes at that point, so I coasted until I ran out of race track. We barely touched but I did a half-spin backwards and had to pit to change the tires.

“I lost a lap in the pits and never got it back. I finished ninth, but the way the car was running, if I had got my lap back, I would have been fifth.”

Cheever went on to win the race.

Yeley will be in an Ed Pink Ford-powered Beast, owned by Steve Lewis, a Laguna Beach publisher-promoter. His No. 91 will be part of a record five-car Lewis entry, which also includes Stewart, Darland, Kasey Kahne and Bobby East, son of chassis builder Bob East.

“That’s a high-dollar team Lewis has, with five guys and renting the track for practice,” Steele said from Indianapolis, where his team is installing a new Gary Stanton-built Mopar engine in his midget. Steele drove for Lewis when he won on the track’s opening night in March 1999.

Steele won last year’s Turkey Night race in a car owned by Gino Tomassi, the same one he will be in next week.

Stewart won the 2000 race at Irwindale in the same car he will drive this year. He actually will be seeking a third Turkey Night victory, having won a USAC TQ midget feature as part of the 1993 program at Bakersfield Speedway.

After Stewart’s win in 2000, he bought the car from Lewis to put in his private collection in Rushville, Ind.

“When Tony told us he wanted to run again this year, we already had our four midgets assigned so we had to get the car back from Tony and freshen it up for next week’s race,” Lewis said. “It’ll be just like it was when he won in it.”

Irwindale officials announced Thursday that Stewart had also been entered in the companion USAC Western State sprint car race in a car owned by Larry Triguieiro. He is listed as a teammate of Jason Leffler, who beat Stewart in the 1999 midget race.

Lewis has been one of USAC’s most successful car owners since he formed his first team with the late Stan Fox in 1979. Fox won the final race at Ascot Park in 1990, which was also Lewis’ first Turkey Night win.

“When I was growing up, my two ambitions were to own a midget car and win Thanksgiving Night at Ascot,” Lewis said. “For a midget guy, it’s like winning the Indianapolis 500.”

Since 1993, Lewis’ cars have won seven USAC midget championships.

“It’s teamwork,” Lewis said. “Bobby [East] builds the chassis in Indianapolis, Ed [Pink] builds the engines in the [San Fernando] Valley and Kelly Drake builds the cars in our shop in Laguna Beach.”

Last Laps

Perris Auto Speedway has extended its schedule to feature championship events postponed two weeks ago.

Running Saturday night will be super stocks, street stocks, champ trucks and cruisers.

Chad Burns of Riverside is 12 points ahead of John Caley of Glen Avon in super stock, and George Bolden of Elsinore holds an eight-point edge over Henry Wesoloski Sr. of Temecula in street stocks.

Each main event winner receives 30 points. Racing will start earlier than usual, at 5:30 p.m.

As expected, CART and Ford announced a two-year marketing and promotions agreement Thursday. CART President Chris Pook said the deal would help draw new drivers to the series.

“We’ve got two very significant [partners]: Bridgestone to supply tires and Ford Motor Co. to supply engines,” Pook said. “That’s the backbone of any racing series.”

The series will be known as “Bridgestone Presents the Champ Car World Series Powered By Ford.”

The Bill Muncey Cup unlimited hydroplane race, held Sept. 22 on San Diego’s Mission Bay, will be shown Sunday at 10 a.m. on ESPN2....

Paul Edwards, one of four drivers selected in Red Bull’s search for a future American Formula One driver, will compete in the Telefonica Formula Nissan next year, a series similar to F3000, in Europe.

Rod Hall will celebrate his 65th birthday today somewhere on the Baja peninsula, between Ensenada and La Paz. Hall is competing in his 35th Baja 1000 in an AM Hummer. He is the only driver to have competed in every event and has won in his class 16 times. Co-driving will be his sons, Chad and Josh. The 1,017-mile race started Thursday and the survivors among more than 240 entries will finish sometime today.

Gale Banks is looking for new fields to conquer in his world’s fastest pickup, a diesel-powered Dodge Dakota called the Banks Sidewinder. The Azusa engineer recently averaged 217.314 mph in a two-way run at the Bonneville Salt Flats, a record for pickups, gas or diesel powered. Banks hopes to enter the street-legal pickup in drag races and truck pulls to show not only its speed but its durability.