Sprint Car Feud Heating Up

Sprint cars, those wonderful machines that bring back memories of upright front-engined Indy cars of years ago, are about to become the victim of a messy feud comparable to CART versus the Indy Racing League over open-wheel racing supremacy.

The United States Auto Club, in conjunction with Perris Auto Speedway, has announced a 30-race West Coast schedule that in essence has put a dagger in the heart of the existing Sprint Car Racing Assn. It has even taken on the trappings of the SCRA’s predecessor, the California Racing Assn., by calling its new series USAC/CRA.

Perris, the semi-banked half-mile clay oval inside the Lake Perris Fairgrounds in Riverside County, has been the home base for the SCRA since it opened in 1996. This year, the track will switch to USAC sanctioning, playing host to 15 of the new series’ 30 scheduled races.

The SCRA will become a traveling circuit, according to President Ron Shuman, a member of the Sprint Car Hall of Fame as a driver.

Although its schedule will not be announced until next week, it is expected to feature seven races at Barona Speedway, a tiny quarter-mile banked oval on the Barona Indian Reservation near Ramona in northeast San Diego County.

“The SCRA is alive and well,” Shuman insisted. “We’ll have between 25 and 30 races. The people at Perris rejected our offer to reduce the size of the purse for SCRA events, so we had to look elsewhere.

“I think when our fans see Barona, they will be pleasantly surprised. And it adds San Diego to our fan base. We will also have our eight-race swing through the Midwest in August.”

The new series will be a major change for USAC car owners, who must switch from 360-cubic-inch engines to specifically engineered 410-cubic-inch, fuel-injected power plants.

Besides losing Perris, the SCRA also has been forced out of Ventura Raceway and Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix.

Shuman said that he may poll SCRA owners on the possibility of racing at Irwindale Speedway, which is a paved half-mile oval.

“It isn’t all that difficult to change a chassis from running on dirt to pavement and back,” Shuman said. “It could be helpful for some of our younger drivers who want to move to other series by gaining pavement experience. What we don’t want to do, though, is force owners to build special pavement cars.”

Perris will open its 2004 season with the winged World of Outlaws sprint cars, featuring Steve Kinser, on Feb. 28, and then will move into the new USAC/CRA season March 6.

“I know a lot of speculation has been made that this decision was solely made based on economics,” said Don Kazarian, whose family owns Perris Auto Speedway.

“However, this was not the case. USAC brings a lot more to the table for long-term growth and stability for all the racetracks, race teams and race fans than its past sanctioning body.

“It is our shared goal with USAC to continue to work toward standardizing the rules for sprint car teams nationwide, so they can race under one set of rules. However, there will be little or no changes this year, so we can minimize the expense for the race teams.”

The biggest problem for both series may be car count. Are there enough cars to support competing series in the same region? Probably not. It will be interesting to see who shows up for the USAC opener at Perris and the SCRA opener at Tulare.

Driver Richard Griffin, the “Ice Man” from Silver City, N.M., and car owner Ron Chaffin will be crowned SCRA champions at an awards dinner Jan. 17 at the Flamingo Hilton hotel in Las Vegas.

It will be Griffin’s fifth championship in the last six years and Chaffin’s eighth owner’s title in nine years with Bruce Bromme Jr. as the mechanic.

The Chaffin team is expected to run in the USAC series because the team’s sponsor, Temecula Pipe & Supply, is also the track sprint car series sponsor.

All-American

Awards Banquet

The 34th annual American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Assn. banquet to honor the 2003 All-American racing team is Saturday night at the Sheraton Suites Fairplex in Pomona.

Dan Gurney, whose driving, designing and building of cars and running of winning teams earned him Hall of Fame recognition, will share the spotlight with the 15 drivers named to the All-American team.

Gurney will receive a Pioneer in Racing award from the organization.

Eight of the 15 are expected to receive their honors in person, a record number in recent years at a time that most teams are testing for the coming season.

The two major class champions from the National Hot Rod Assn. will be on hand, Tony Pedregon in funny car and Larry Dixon in top fuel. Curiously, in balloting for driver of the year, top fuel veteran Kenny Bernstein and pro stock champion Greg Anderson were named by at least one panelist as being the best among all racing series, yet neither made the All-American first team.

Paul Tracy, CART champ car champion, will be making his third appearance on the first team as an open-wheel selection. Road racers Scott Pruett, Trans-Am champion, and Ron Fellows, American LeMans GTS winner; feeder series champions A. J. Allmendinger of CART Toyota Atlantic and Mark Taylor of IRL Infiniti Pro Series; and Frank Kimmel, five-time ARCA champion, also will be honored.

With NASCAR holding its pre-Daytona 500 tests this week for the new Nextel Cup series, missing will be Matt Kenseth, the last Winston Cup champion; Ryan Newman, whose eight wins earned him driver-of-the-year honors; and two rookies moving up, J.J. Yeley, the U.S. Auto Club triple crown winner, and Brian Vickers, NASCAR Busch series winner.

And also missing for a record 16th time as a first-team selection will be Kinser, the perennial World of Outlaws sprint car champion. Nor are IRL champion Scott Dixon and retired Indianapolis 500 winner Gil de Ferran expected to attend.

The driver who received the most votes, regardless of category, will be revealed as winner of the Jerry Titus Memorial Trophy as the AARWBA driver of the year.

The dinner, which will be preceded by a reception at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, is open to the public. Tickets are $50. Details: (818) 842-7005.

Also Saturday, at 11 a.m., the annual CRA Reunion will take place at Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel in Buena Park.

The Gardner brothers, Jack and Howard, will be honored guests. Jack won the 1954 CRA championship, the last time it was won with a flathead Ford engine. Howard was a charter CRA member when it was organized in 1946.

Rodger Ward, two-time Indy 500 winner, will celebrate his 82nd birthday at the luncheon.

Details: (661) 269-2700.

Last Laps

Concern about Chad Reed’s dislocated shoulder proved unfounded when the Australian rider broke away to win the opening AMA supercross by 19 seconds Saturday night at Angel Stadium.

With three-time champion Ricky Carmichael out for the season with a knee injury, Reed appears ready to dominate the series. They race Saturday night in Phoenix and return to Anaheim next week.

For the first time in a number of years, there were empty seats at Anaheim last week. The attendance was announced as a 45,050 sellout, but it was apparent that there were several thousand no-shows.

Brendan Gaughan, of the casino Gaughan family of Las Vegas, has been chosen by Roger Penske to move up to the Nextel Cup and drive a Kodak-sponsored Dodge. Gaughan drove in the Craftsman Truck series last year.

The Nextel Cup season doesn’t begin for another month, but 2002 champion Tony Stewart can’t wait. He will drive a Mopar-powered midget tonight in the 18th O’Reilly Chili Bowl Midget Nationals in Tulsa, Okla.

Stewart hopes history will repeat itself. He won the Chili Bowl in 2002 before going on to win his first NASCAR championship.