Motor Racing : A.J. Foyt Will Join the Men in the Street at Long Beach for First Time

Long Beach, where promoter Chris Pook started the street racing craze in the United States 13 years ago, will be filled with its annual sounds of racing cars screeching through its streets this weekend in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Defending champion Mario Andretti, national champion Bobby Rahal and stars such as A. J. Foyt, Emerson Fittipaldi, Rick Mears, Danny Sullivan, Michael Andretti, Roberto Guerrero, Al Unser Jr. and Teo Fabi will be in the first wave of Indy cars that will roar down Shoreline Drive at 10 a.m. Friday for the opening practice session of the three-day racing program.

The 158.65-mile race, No. 2 in the PPG Indy Car World Series and the final event before the Indianapolis 500, will start Sunday at 1 p.m. The 24-car field, competing for $700,000, will make 95 revolutions of the classic 11-turn, 1.67-mile seaside circuit that includes an ear-shattering run through the underground parking garage of the Hyatt Hotel.

The race will be televised by ABC but blacked out in Los Angeles.

Foyt, traditionally an oval course driver, will be driving at Long Beach for the first time, having announced intentions of running the full 15-race CART schedule in quest of his eighth national championship.

Foyt, however, has kept his hand in road racing by driving his own Porsche 962 on the International Motor Sports Assn. schedule. He finished ninth in the 24 Hours of Daytona with Al Unser Jr. and Elliott Forbes-Robinson, seventh at Miami with Rob Dyson and fourth at the 12 Hours of Sebring with Dyson and Hurley Haywood.

“I think I’ve been around long enough to find my way around the race track,� the four-time Indianapolis 500 winner said when asked about tackling Long Beach for the first time. Last Sunday, in the CART season opener at Phoenix, Foyt finished fourth, two laps behind winner Mario Andretti.

Foyt, at 53 the busiest major driver in the country, has also competed in two NASCAR stock car races this year, the Daytona and Atlanta 500s, but he failed to finish either. Last September, he set a world closed-course record of 257.123 m.p.h. in an Oldsmobile Aerotech.

Indy cars won’t be the only attraction for racing fans this weekend.

There will be two races Saturday, after the final Indy car qualifying session. A pro-celebrity race will have a combination of sports and entertainment figures such as Walter Payton, Jay Johnstone, Richard Dean Anderson and L.A. Law stars Susan Ruttan and Blair Underwood against race drivers Willy T. Ribbs, Parnelli Jones and Dan Gurney.

Actor-race driver Paul Newman will make his Long Beach debut in the Sports Car Club of America Trans-Am sedan race, which also will spotlight defending champion Scott Pruett. The Trans-Am will start Saturday at 4 p.m.

Sunday, as a preliminary to the Grand Prix, there will be a Valvoline-Bosch Super Vee championship race.

Former Indy 500 winner and national champion Tom Sneva, who is without a ride until the May 29 Indianapolis 500, will drive the pace car.

Gurney’s father, John, a noted opera singer who was with the Metropolitan Opera for nine seasons, will sing the national anthem.

SPRINT CARS--A veteran and a newcomer will be added entries in the California Racing Assn.’s Saturday night Salute to the Long Beach Grand Prix at Ascot Park. The veteran is Lealand McSpadden of Tempe, Ariz., who became the seventh driver to break 19 seconds (95 m.p.h.) for one lap at Ascot two weeks ago and the newcomer is midget driver P.J. Jones of Rolling Hills, the teen-aged son of series sponsor Parnelli Jones, who will make his debut in a sprinter in Bill Pratt’s machine. McSpadden will be trying to end a long victory drought on the half-mile dirt oval. McSpadden finished third behind Eddie Wirth and Jerry Meyer after his qualifying lap of 18.955 seconds. Although McSpadden has recorded 7 of his 25 California Racing Assn. wins at Ascot, he has not won there since October of 1984. This weekend, he will be in the No. 1 Gambler, owned by Frank Lewis of Huntington Beach. Others who have bettered 19 seconds include Brad Noffsinger, who has done it 19 times; Stan Atherton, Dean Thompson, Jeff Heywood, Clark Drake and Wirth, who holds the record at 18.732 seconds.

STOCK CARS--Posted awards of $400,000 will serve as a stimulus for NASCAR Winston Racing Series competitors starting this week on short tracks around the country. Saturday night will be kickoff night at Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino, Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale and Cajon Speedway in El Cajon. Two other tracks, Ascot Park and Saugus Speedway, will begin competition next week. . . . Hobby stocks, foreign stocks and jalopies will race Friday night at Saugus, with modifieds, street stocks and Figure 8s on Saturday night. . . . The highly competitive NASCAR Southwest Tour will hold race No. 3 Saturday night at Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield with hometown favorite Mike Chase defending his championship against 1988 winners Roman Calczynski and Troy Beebe, as well as former Mesa Marin track champions Jim Thirkettle and Gary Collins.

SPEEDWAY BIKES--Sam Ermolenko, America’s leading international rider, will return from the British League to ride in Southern California this week. Ermolenko, who was suspended for failing to submit to a drug test last August in England, and then reinstated, will ride tonight at Ascot Park, Friday night at Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa and Sunday at Speedway USA in Victorville. Twice a third place finisher in the World Championship, Ermolenko won the Spring Classic at Costa Mesa earlier this year before joining his Wolverhampton Wolves team in England. . . . Promoter John La Douceur’s move of the San Bernardino Inland Motor Speedway from the county fairgrounds to Glen Helen Off Highway Vehicle Park, eight miles north of the city, has been approved by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and Wednesday night competition is expected to start sometime in May.

RALLY--The Budweiser Rim of the World Rally, run in a series of sections over dirt roads in the Angeles National Forest and the Antelope Valley, will start Saturday at 1:45 p.m. at Antelope Valley Nissan in Lancaster and will finish around 2 a.m. at the Desert Inn, with a food and repair stop at Lake Elizabeth. Defending champions in the grueling event, third in the California Rally Series, are Lon Peterson of Victorville and Jim Love of Palmdale in a ’76 Plymouth Arrow. The charity event will benefit the Valley Oasis Shelter for Victims of Domestic Violence.

DRAG RACING--The U.S. Fuel and Gas meet, the old Smokers meet, will be held this weekend at the Famoso strip, north of Bakersfield. The meet, one of the largest independent events of the season, will feature Don (Big Daddy) Garlits driving Swamp Rat I, the top fueler that he ran at Bakersfield 30 years ago in his West Coast debut. Garlits will make two runs in the restored dragster on each Saturday and Sunday. It will be his first time on a track since crashing last August in Spokane, Wash. Among the competitors in funny cars will be John Force, second-fastest qualifier in the International Drag Racing Assn. meet that was rained out last Sunday in Texas. Force elected to compete in the Smokers meet rather than remain in Texas for this weekend’s postponed competition.

MOTOCROSS--Continental Motosport Club riders will be at Ascot Park Friday night and Perris Raceway Sunday.

NECROLOGY--George Stiles, for many years the competition director at Saugus Speedway, died last Saturday in Antioch, Calif., of complications after a lengthy illness. Stiles, 40, and his wife Brynda have been operating Antioch Fairgrounds Speedway the last year. Services will be held at 10 a.m. today at the Skillin-Carroll Mortuary in Santa Paula.