Critics Hint That Newman Is Fueling Around

Ryan Newman leads NASCAR’s Winston Cup drivers in victories with eight, twice as many as anyone else, but he also leads in the number of times his No. 12 Penske South Racing Dodge has been torn down after a race and its engine, chassis, transmission, rear end and fuel cell disassembled and dissected.

“We put the big microscope on half a dozen cars, always including the winner, after every race,” series director John Darby said from Concord, N.C., where NASCAR has a night Winston Cup race scheduled Saturday. “It’s a three-hour process and we check everything, completely.”

It is his practice to tear down not only the winning car, but the first five finishers, plus one or two chosen at random from the rest of the field.

“We want everyone to know they might be inspected, even if they’re not winning,” he said.

However, that means that Newman’s cars have been inspected more than any others because his 13 top-five finishes in 30 races are more than anyone else’s this season.

That still hasn’t kept Newman’s rivals from complaining that several of his wins were the result of unusually good fuel mileage, especially last Sunday at Kansas Speedway, where he ran the final 117 miles of the Banquet 400 on one tank of fuel -- and still had enough to do celebratory burnouts on his victory lap.

“We don’t cheat; we’ve never cheated!” exclaimed crew chief Matt Borland after hearing grumbling from other drivers.

Cheating, or suspicion of it, has been a part of NASCAR tradition since Bill France put on his first race in June of 1949. Glenn Dunnaway won that race, a 150-miler on the dirt at Charlotte, N.C., but his ’47 Ford didn’t pass post-race inspection and was disqualified for having unapproved rear springs. After Dunnaway was moved from first to last and runner-up Jim Roper named the winner, car owner Hubert Westmoreland sued NASCAR for $10,000. The case was dismissed when a North Carolina judge ruled that the fledgling organization had the right to make and enforce its own rules.

Darby pointed out that although the No. 12 car was singled out because it had won at Kansas, there were at least seven others, including third-place finisher Jeremy Mayfield, who’d run the same distance as Newman after their final pit stops.

Curiously, Mayfield was one of the loudest complainers.

“I don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. “We just barely made it to the end of the race. We were saving all of the fuel that we could and he was doing burnouts after it was over. I don’t know if we could have done that.”

Tony Stewart, last year’s Cup champion, was another critic of Newman’s achievement.

“We drove away from Ryan Newman all day, but we get fourth and he gets first,” said Stewart, who has won only once this year. Then he added sarcastically, “I’m going to start buying gas at their house.”

If the team had been caught in a violation, it wouldn’t have been the first time a Roger Penske-owned car win was tainted.

After Bobby Allison won the 1974 Los Angeles Times 500 at Ontario Motor Speedway in an AMC Matador, the car was found to have unapproved valve lifters. Allison’s victory was allowed to stand but the Penske team was fined $9,100.

It also wouldn’t have been the first time someone got caught with a trick fuel cell. Old-timers like to recall the time one car had a beach ball inflated inside its fuel cell. With the ball inflated, the cell held the maximum of 22 gallons. Once the race started, the driver deflated the ball and was able to take on several extra gallons of gas during pit stops.

Then there was the day the fuel cell in the late Smokey Yunick’s car was challenged. After getting an OK from NASCAR inspectors, he tossed the empty cell into the car and drove off -- presumably with no source of fuel -- back to the trailer.

Legendary Richard Petty, who used to say, “If you ain’t cheatin’ a little, you ain’t likely to be competitive,” says one of the reasons for today’s complaints is that the cars, with their common bodies, are too similar. Talking with Dave Despain on Speed Channel’s “Wind Tunnel,” he said:

“It’s gotten so technical and the cars are so close that you have to depend on gas mileage or you gotta depend on position on the racetrack after a pit stop. Back in the good old days, if you had a fast car and you got behind, you just run hard and you caught up.

“I think it was more plain, raw racing than you see today. [Nowadays,] they throw the green flag and 43 cars all run together. That’s not racing to me. Racing is where you run up there and beat on someone, and you get by them and then you go on to the next guy. That’s what racing is all about.”

*

Southland Scene

For the 35th year, the U.S. National Speedway motorcycle championships will be held Saturday night on the tiny Orange County Fairgrounds track in Costa Mesa.

Track champion Scott Brant of Riverside will be battling former national champions Mike Faria, Bobby Schwartz, Chris Manchester, Alan Christian and Kelly Moran in 23 heats of racing over the 190-yard oval.

The Japanese sport of drifting, which attracted record crowds to Irwindale Speedway on Labor Day, is returning Sunday for a Drift Showoff Teaser and another sellout is expected.... Glen Helen Raceway in Devore will host the eighth annual Yamaha AMA Grand Prix Saturday and Sunday.

Irwindale’s Saturday night show will feature Twin 100s for the NASCAR super late models, plus super trucks and a supermoto motorcycle event, which combines road racing with motocross. Lee Hatch of Covina will be out to build on his lead in the super truck series.

Three Southland jet skiers will defend their IJSBA World Finals championship on Sunday on Lake Havasu -- South African Dustin Motzouris of Azusa in pro ski, and Chris MacClugage of Fullerton in pro runabout 1200 on Kawasakis and Victor Sheldon of Vista in pro-am ski stock on a Polaris.

*

Supercross

After defeating world motocross champion Stefan Everts of Belgium in the Motocross des Nations feature race last Sunday in Belgium, Ricky Carmichael returns home this weekend to face his national rivals in the Maxxis U.S. Open at the MGM Arena in Las Vegas.

Carmichael’s victory did not prevent Belgium’s team of Everts, Joel Smets and Steve Ramon from upsetting the American team that included Tim Ferry and Ryan Hughes. The U.S. did not compete the last two years after winning in 2000.

Carmichael, the U.S. supercross and outdoor motocross champion, won by 11 seconds over a 33-rider field in front of 23,000 fans, among them King Albert II.

The U.S. Open is a two-day event with championship motos Saturday and Sunday and the winner determined by points from the two events. Mike LaRocco is defending champion.

Villeneuve Coming Back?

Jacques Villeneuve, the feisty Canadian who won the Formula One title in 1997, two years after winning the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship, has apparently driven his last race in F1. Villeneuve informed his British American Racing team that he would not drive in Sunday’s final race in Japan. Earlier in the week, BAR announced that he would be replaced next year by Japanese driver Takuma Sato.

Villeneuve is expected to return his talents to CART next year, since his manager, Craig Pollock, also is co-owner of PK Racing with industrialist Kevin Kalkhoven, one of the partners attempting to purchase CART.

*

Last Laps

Dick Glover, managing director of ABC/ESPN’s Olympics-related business, has been named to succeed Paul Brooks as the head of NASCAR’s Los Angeles headquarters. Brooks was promoted to senior vice president for NASCAR, reporting directly to Chairman and Chief Executive Brian France, with offices in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Carl Haas, one of CART’s strongest backers as a champ car team co-owner with Paul Newman, has resigned from the open-wheel racing organization’s board of directors.

Tony Renna, of Deland, Fla., has been named by team owner Chip Ganassi to drive the No. 10 Indy Racing League car next year as a teammate of New Zealander Scott Dixon. Renna will replace Tomas Scheckter.