Short-Track Drivers Get a Prize of Their Own

For years, the ultimate prize in stock car racing has been NASCAR’s Winston Cup, a pinnacle attainable to only a select few with the talent, money and associates to compete at the sport’s highest level.

Now there is a new goal, a grass-roots championship for the thousands of short-track drivers who fill the fields at hundreds of tracks across the country. Its rather unwieldy name is the Toyota All-Star Showdown. In essence, it is the national short-track championship.

The inaugural event will be run this weekend at Irwindale Speedway, where 70 drivers from six regional NASCAR touring series will compete for two championships. One is for Grand National Division drivers from the Winston West and Busch North series. The other is for Elite Division drivers from four regions, among them the Featherlite Southwest Series.

For longer than NASCAR has been around, there have been stock car races at nearly every track in the country, but most tracks had their own rules. Thus, it was impossible to determine a national champion, because there were as many chassis and engine specs as there were tracks.

Brian France, years before he was to become NASCAR’s chairman and chief executive, devised a plan to create a single national-caliber event with a level playing field. Gradually, France persuaded various tracks to modify their rules and agree to run a common formula, one for late-model cars and one for cars virtually identical to those in Winston Cup.

The 30 Grand National and 40 Elite qualifiers, who will be going for $500,000 in prize money, offer distinct contrasts in age and experience.

JR Patton of Las Cruces, N.M., and Ryan Moore of Scarborough, Maine, are 20; Jack Sellers of Sacramento is 59.

Kelly Moore, Ryan’s father, has started 311 races; David Eshelman of Fontana has started nine.

Distinctive in their differences are the two Grand National Division champions, Scott Lynch of Winston West and Andy Santerre of Busch North.

Lynch, 23, is a rookie from Burley, Idaho, who won two of the last four Winston West races and became the champion when the final race was canceled because of Southern California wildfires. He was Southwest Series rookie of the year in 2001 before joining Orleans Racing this season.

Santerre, 34, is a two-time Busch North champion from Cherryfield, Maine, who was Busch Grand National rookie of the year in 1998. He won a Busch race in 1999 at Pikes Peak and has won 13 Busch North races in nine years.

Lynch drives a Dodge Intrepid, Santerre a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

“Andy is one of the guys I’m going to focus on,” said Lynch, a bright-eyed, apple-cheeked youngster who finds it difficult to believe he is where he is as a race car driver with as little experience as he has.

“He’s been there,” Lynch said. “Andy’s beaten guys like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth. I’m anxious to see how he gets around Irwindale.”

Santerre had never seen Irwindale before Wednesday and had never driven on the half-mile oval before Thursday’s three-hour practice.

“It doesn’t take long to adapt to a new track,” he said.

Or, as Southeast Series champion Charlie Bradberry said, “If you can’t learn a track in three hours, you’d better pack up and go home.”

Lynch, who graduated from the University of Utah in July, got into racing because his father, Jim, was a car collector and family vacations revolved around going to races or car shows.

“One day when I was 12 or 13, we were driving home from a race when my dad suddenly stopped, and said, ‘I’m going to get us a race car,’ and he turned around and went back and bought a car,” Lynch said. “It was an open-wheel modified and dad drove it in some races at Magic Valley Speedway in Twin Falls [Idaho].

“When I was 16, actually three days after my birthday, I got to race it. I’d helped my dad working on it when he was driving, but from the moment I got behind the wheel, I loved it. I knew that was what I wanted for a career.”

After two years driving the old modified car, he moved into late-model stock cars in 1999.

The most difficult part, he said, was trying to be a full-time student at Utah and a full-time racer.

“I was very fortunate to have some professors who gave me a break, letting me take tests either before or after they were scheduled, and excusing me when I missed classes to go to a race.”

He earned his degree in communications and business administration.

Lynch hopes his experience at Irwindale, where he won a Winston West race on July 26 and finished second in a Southwest Series race last year, will pay off in tonight’s 50-lap qualifying race and Saturday night’s 125-lap championship event.

“This is my favorite track, and I think a lot of the guys from back East will say the same thing after they race here,” he said. “It has everything a short track should have. At a half-mile, there’s room to run fast, it has banking and it has more than one groove. In fact, you’ll see some three-wide racing and, from a driver’s viewpoint, that is exciting.”

At first glance, it might appear that Santerre had stepped backward, that perhaps the Cherryfield native was cherry-picking in Busch North.

Not so, if you know the story. The New Englander was ready for a big season in 1999 after joining the likes of Jeff Gordon, Joe Nemechek and Ricky Craven as Busch rookies of the year.

In the season opener at Daytona, though, Santerre was involved in a crash that destroyed his car and broke his right leg in seven places. Surgeons used four plates and 18 screws to piece the lower leg back together, and Santerre had four months of rehabilitation.

Despite beating young Earnhardt in a 50-lap duel to the wire at Pikes Peak, Santerre was released from his three-year contract. Without big-money sponsorship, he went back home to Busch North, where he has won the last two championships.

Compared with earlier problems, however, that was almost insignificant to Santerre.

When he was 19, he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a virus that attacks the central nervous and muscular systems. He was hospitalized for 87 days, 32 of which were in the intensive care unit on a ventilator.

He was paralyzed, his lungs collapsed, his kidneys failed, he developed pneumonia and an infection, and at one point, his family was called in for fear he wouldn’t live through the night. It took him a year to recover and when he did, he decided to become a race car driver.

Tonight’s program, which will start at 8, consists of four 50-lap races, two for each division. Saturday’s racing will start at 5 p.m., preceded at 3 by an autograph session, including Darrell Waltrip, the event grand marshal, on the front straightway. There will be two races, 100 laps for the Elite division and 125 laps for Grand National cars.

An interesting sidelight: Although the event is called the Toyota All-Star Showdown, there won’t be a single Toyota in competition.

Last Laps

Perris Auto Speedway will close its Passcar season Saturday night with five classes of racing -- super stocks, street stocks, champ trucks, hornets and cruisers.

Terry Hershberger of Corona and James Scott of Hemet have all but clinched championships in super stock and street stock, respectively, but season titles are at stake in the three other races. Perris’ Ronnie Everhart has a 15-point lead over Stan Youngblood of San Bernardino in the hornet class and if she hangs on to first, will become the first female track champion at Perris.

The 100-year heritage of Ford will be on display, starting tonight, at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum in Pomona. Many of Ford’s most significant race cars will be on display, one a replica of Barney Oldfield’s “999,” which set several speed records in the early 1900s. The exhibit will be open until Feb. 6.

Vince Granatelli’s racing facility in Phoenix, including Lola and March Indy cars race-ready with Ilmor Chevy engines, a Learjet airplane, dynamometer and hundreds of racing parts will go on the auction block Nov. 15. Details: (800) 968-4444.