Link to the Past Makes His Presence Felt

Sometimes initials are all that’s needed to identify someone. Like JFK, or FDR.

In the world of racing, EFR has the same magical quality. To say Elliott Forbes-Robinson is superfluous.

EFR has been gone from Southern California for more than 20 years, trading an old stone house in La Crescenta for lake-side living in North Carolina. But he is back today, driving a Pontiac in the Grand American Champions main event at California Speedway.

He will celebrate his 61st birthday today, so it is fitting that he is back where he grew up -- attending Glendale High and playing on the dusty hills of Riverside International Raceway where his father, the original EFR, was general manager when the legendary road circuit opened in 1957.

EFR II is as much a bridge to the past as Les Richter and Dan Gurney at Riverside, the track that defined road racing until it was closed in the late 1980s to make way for urban sprawl.

“It’s a long way back to remember, but I think I first drove my dad’s MGA at Riverside when I was about 14; it was nothing but a dirt path,” he recalled Saturday after qualifying Max Crawford’s Boss Snowplow Pontiac at 109.982 mph around California Speedway’s 21-turn, 2.8-mile paved road course.

Forbes-Robinson will start fourth, behind three Lexus Rileys owned by Chip Ganassi and Felix Sabates, who also have NASCAR and Indy Racing League teams. The Max Papis-Scott Pruett tandem won the pole at 111.607, followed by the IRL pair of Scott Dixon and Darren Manning and Jimmy Morales and Luis Diaz of Mexico.

“Riverside was a big part of my life,” Forbes-Robinson said. “I hung out there before it opened, I was there for the opening-day ribbon-cutting. That was the day we first got a look at Richard and Pedro Rodriguez. That was quite a day.

“Later, I got my first regional license at the SCCA driving school there, and when the track closed I won one of the last races and broke Mark Donohue’s track record. I still hold it because they never ran there again.”

The 400-kilometer (89 laps) Lexus Grand American series race today will be EFR’s first at Fontana, adding to his Southern California collection that includes long-gone Ontario Motor Speedway and Ascot Park, as well as Riverside.

“I haven’t had many laps here, but it has its own personality, especially that first gear curve,” he said. “It’s hard to squeeze a road course inside an oval, it can never match up with a true road course like Riverside....

” My hope is that the Crawford with its good aero will be fast on the oval and the excellent brakes will help in the infield. It should be one heck of a race. Qualifying was close and the practice times were close.”

He arrived here a winner, finishing first in the last Grand American race three weeks ago at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala., making him at 60 the oldest winning driver in the series.

“I can up that another year if I win Sunday,” he said wryly. “I’ll drive the first half and turn it over to Butch [Leitzinger] for the last half. That’s the way we did it at Barber. We were in front when I climbed out and I hope we do it the same way here.”

Except for the gray hair, there is little about Forbes-Robinson that would suggest he is in the 60s. He “retired” in 1989 and with Humpy Wheeler founded the Legends car series. In 1993, he returned to the cockpit and in 1999 had his most successful year, winning the 24 Hours of Daytona with a collection of drivers in a car owned by Rob Dyson, the inaugural American LeMans Series championship and the Trans-Am co-driving with Leitzinger.

Those successes earned him a spot, at 56, on the U.S. racing writers’ All America team.

As trim as he was when he won the Trans Am championship in 1982, Forbes-Robinson is not about to give up racing.

Next week he will be in Baja California pre-testing a race buggy in anticipation of running the Baja 1000 next month.

“I’ve done it a few times before and it’s great fun,” he said. “Someone offered me a ride, so what could I say.”

Although many in his family remain in Southern California, he and his wife, Lounette, are almost native North Carolinians after settling next to a lake in Sherrills Ford in 1981.

“We come back to visit family now and then, but California is not the way it was 20 years ago,” said Lounette. “We’re North Carolina folks now.”

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Craig Stanton of Long Beach finished 22nd in the Grand-Am Cup series season finale Saturday at California Speedway, but it was enough to give the Porsche driver the championship. When points leader Terry Borcheller finished 28th in a Cadillac, it gave him and Stanton 260 points.

Stanton, 47, won the tie-breaker with six wins compared to four for the Gainesville, Ga., driver. The two had shared winning rides in the first three races in a Porsche before Borcheller switched to a Cadillac.

Canadians Greg Wilkins and Dave Lacey won the 250-mile race, 89 laps around a 21-turn circuit, driving a Porsche.