SPORTS WEEKEND : MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : Drivers Will Be Taking It to the Streets of L.A.

The third Ford L.A. Street Race this weekend in Exposition Park is many things to many people.

To NASCAR Craftsman Truck champion Ron Hornaday, it is a chance to come home, visit his parents and do a little racing in front of old friends. Hornaday will do double duty here, driving an Ultra Wheel spec truck as well as a Featherlite Southwest Tour stock car.

To NASCAR Winston Cup veteran Ken Schrader, it’s a chance to get in another race on what must be the busiest racing schedule in the world. How about this: Schrader will drive Sunday in Darlington, S.C., in the Southern 500, fly to Los Angeles that night, drive in the L.A. Street Race Monday afternoon, then fly to Salt Lake City to drive Monday night in a Winston West race.

To Tim Woods III, it’s a chance to make his debut in a Southwest Tour race, hoping to showcase his talent in front of potential sponsors who would like to help finance a young African American driver.

To 35 regular drivers on the Southwest Tour, it is an opportunity to cash in on the year’s most lucrative purse, $157,200, and pick up valuable points toward the season championship.

And to the folks who run the American IndyCar, Ultra Wheel Spec Truck and PRO Racing series, and the Ford Ranger EV electric car exhibition, it will be an opportunity to display their types of racing.

Thirty-two cars will start the Southwest Tour race Monday at 1 p.m., 125 laps around a one-mile road circuit that circles the Sports Arena.

“I came out for the street race last year because it gave me a chance to race against my son in the truck race,” said Hornaday, a two-time Southwest Tour champion while living in Palmdale. “I had so much fun racing right down in the middle of Los Angeles that I decided to come back.”

Hornaday won the spec truck race last year and was leading in the Southwest Tour with a couple of laps to go when the shifter broke on a restart.

“After the races, I’ll go up to Lake Isabella on Tuesday for a charity deal with my mom and dad, and then it’s back to Richmond [Va.] for a Craftsman Truck race Thursday night,” Hornaday said.

He also plans to run a Chevrolet for Felix Sabates’ Winston Cup team at Richmond next Saturday night.

“Next year I’m going to drive a Busch Grand National car for Dale Earnhardt, the one Dale Jr. is driving this year,” said Hornaday, who moved to Lake Norman, N.C., several years ago to further his stock car racing career.

“I just wish I’d made the move 10 years earlier. If you’re not located in the Carolinas, you don’t have much of a chance to make it in NASCAR.”

Schrader, who moved from St. Louis to Concord, N.C., years ago for the same reason, is home barely enough to pick up his mail.

“Racing my Winston Cup car is my livelihood; the other stuff I do is my hobby,” said the 44-year-old racer who estimates he will have driven about 80 races this year. Of those, 36 are Winston Cup events.

“We’d probably be better off just racing the Cup car, but the bottom line is that as long it’s all profitable, that’s still what I want to do. If it becomes work, I’ll cut back. So far it hasn’t.”

Schrader said he had driven in two races a thousand miles apart on the same day before, but “never the day after driving in the Southern 500.”

Although Schrader drives a Chevrolet in the Winston Cup and Busch series, he will be in a Jack Roush-prepared Ford in L.A. It is the one Mark Martin drove last year. He will be back in a Chevrolet for the Winston West race that night. Because he will miss Sunday qualifying, he will qualify Monday morning after a short practice session to learn the new track configuration.

“Obviously, we’d be in better shape if we were out there Sunday, but it’s not an option,” he said. “We’ll be OK. We ran good out there last year under the same circumstances until we lost our alternator.”

There is no slowing him down. Next week, after Saturday night’s race at Richmond, Schrader will fly to Salem, Ind., for an ARCA race Sunday afternoon.

Woods, 24, is a home-grown Los Angeles driver who hopes to one day be as successful as Hornaday or Schrader.

“It’s time we had a driver from Los Angeles make it in NASCAR,” Woods said. “I can’t remember when someone from the city was a top driver. Hornaday lived in Palmdale, a long way from downtown L.A.”

Woods, who played safety on Mt. San Antonio’s national junior college championship football team in 1997, is in his third year as a professional driver. Last year he was rookie of the year in the spec truck series.

This year, he is driving in NASCAR’s super-late model series at Irwindale Speedway. He won the main event in his fourth race and has five top-five finishes in 17 races.

“Depending on sponsorship, our plan is to run either the Busch or Craftsman Truck series next year,” he said. “If not that, then a full season of Southwest Tour.”

Woods got started in karts when he was 13, racing in junior ranks against such future open-wheel drivers as Richie Hearn, Bryan Herta and Greg Moore.

“I do miss football, but after winning the national title at Mt. SAC, I decided to drop it to concentrate on racing,” he said. “So far, I haven’t looked back.”

He got the driving itch from his grandfather, Tim Sr., a pioneer drag racer who was voted into drag racing’s Hall of Fame in 1997 as a member of the Stone, Woods and Cook team that campaigned a ’41 Willys coupe in the early 1960s.

Woods said he chose NASCAR over CART champ cars or IRL Indy cars because “I always wanted to drive on one of those high-banked [superspeedway] tracks in the South.”

He will drive a Ford Taurus in Monday’s race.

WINSTON CUP

While NASCAR’s lucrative series heads to Darlington, S.C., this weekend for the Southern 500, everyone associated with stock cars is still talking about Dale Earnhardt’s nudge-and-pass of Terry Labonte to win last Saturday night’s race at Bristol, Tenn.

On the final lap, Earnhardt spun Labonte into the wall, then ducked underneath his car to take the checkered flag. Ricky Rudd was right behind them.

“All I know is I took the white flag figuring I had a great chance at winning the race,” Rudd said. “I knew what was going to happen, and I think everybody in the place did. In my mind, I was either going to win the race or, at the worst, finish second. It all depended on who survived what was going to happen. I just didn’t see both of them getting out of the second turn.

“I saw Terry get sideways and saw the hole, but it closed. If I’d been able to get through there, we would have been watching it from Victory Lane. Instead, the car was pretty well tore up [after colliding with Labonte’s] and we were able to come on home third [behind Jimmy Spencer]. I think the mistake Terry made was passing [Earnhardt]. He should have just run square with him and then blown him away in the fourth corner and he’d have had the race won. . . . You have to look who you’re dealing with. You don’t give him an opportunity to get back.”

Rudd had a similar experience at Sears Point in 1991 when NASCAR accused him of spinning Davey Allison as the pair headed for the white flag. NASCAR officials penalized Rudd 15 seconds, moving him from first to second, giving the race to Allison.

“The deal at Sears Point, essentially NASCAR put me back to where I was before Davey and I touched,” recalled Rudd. “My feeling then was it was every man for himself on the last lap. NASCAR said that wasn’t the way it was. I didn’t agree then but I took what they said and moved on.”

LAST LAPS

Elliott Forbes-Robinson, who finished second behind Jacky Ickx in the 1979 Can-Am, and Butch Leitzinger have been crowned co-champions of the U.S. Road Racing series in the Can-Am class. Forbes-Robinson and Leitzinger were in the winning car at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Cort Wagner of Los Angeles won the USRRC GT3 championship while driving a Porsche 911 for three different teams. The season ended when the final two races were canceled.

NASCAR Winston Cup points leader Dale Jarrett was a near unanimous choice in third-quarter balloting for driver of the year. Jarrett was named first on 10 of 14 ballots. Greg Biffle received two first-place votes and Juan Montoya and Mark Kinser one each.

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Ford Los Angeles Street Race

* WHERE: Exposition Park, one-mile street course around Sports Arena.

* WHEN: SATURDAY--practice, 8:20 a.m., PRO Racing series and American IndyCar series qualifying, 3 p.m.; SUNDAY--practice, 8 a.m.; Ultra Wheels spec trucks qualifying, 12:20 p.m.; NASCAR Southwest Tour qualifying, 1:15 p.m.; American IndyCar series race, 60 miles, 3:30 p.m.; PRO Racing series qualifying, 4:15 p.m.; Ulta Wheels Spec Truck qualifying race, 5:30 p.m.; MONDAY--practice, 8 a.m.; Ultra Wheels spec trucks, one hour race, 12 p.m.; NASCAR Southwest Tour series, 125 miles, 1 p.m.; PRO Racing series, one hour enduro, following Tour race.

* TICKETS: Saturday, reserved seats, $17, general admission, $10, children 12 and under, $5. Sunday, reserved seats, $20, general admission, $15, children, $5. Monday, reserved seats, $30, general admission, $20, children, $10. Three-day pass, reserved, $50, general admission, $30, children, $15.

* FEATURE EVENT: NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour; WHEN--1 p.m. Monday; DISTANCE--125 miles; PURSE--$157,200; DEFENDING CHAMPION--Steve Portenga.