MOTOR RACING : New-Look Penske Team Eyes Old Success

Penske team drivers won five races on the Indy car circuit last year, sat on the pole nine of 16 times and dominated the Indianapolis 500 most of the way. For any other team, that would be a resoundingly successful season.

Not by Penske standards. The team’s track record--eight national championships and six Indy 500 victories since 1977--is the winningest in Indy car history, so the fact that it has been three years since Danny Sullivan won the PPG Cup driving championship and Rick Mears the Indy 500 makes this year all the more important.

The cast has changed, down from three drivers to two and two sponsors to one in the interest of concentrating more closely on the object at hand: winning.

Mears and Emerson Fittipaldi will be driving all-new Penske Chevy 91s when Championship Auto Racing Teams conducts the 17th Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach this weekend. Sullivan has gone to Pat Patrick’s Alfa Romeo team, and Pennzoil, Mears’ former sponsor, is now with driver John Andretti and car owner Jim Hall.

“It would be easy to say our success or failure was caused by running a three-car team, but we don’t feel that had a significant bearing on last season,” owner Roger Penske said. “Rick (Mears) said he feels he did as well as he could, be it a one-, two- or three-car team. I’m disappointed at not winning more, but that had nothing to do with my moving to two cars.

“That was strictly a contractual commitment that we would package two cars for Marlboro at Indy and throughout the series. For the first time in many years, we have only one primary sponsor, and it’s a big menu for me to do the job that the McLaren team has done in Europe.”

McLaren cars have won five of the last seven Formula One championships, including the last three.

Mears, who has been with Penske for 14 years, nearly won the CART opener last month in Surfers Paradise, Australia. He was leading with four laps remaining when he was blinded by the sun while in tight traffic and missed a turn. He drove into a runoff area, but by the time he backed up and returned to the course, he had been passed by John Andretti and Bobby Rahal.

“We took some of the things we learned in Australia and refined them in tests on the Firebird (Ariz.) road course for Long Beach,” Mears said. “I have never won there, and I’d like to erase that statistic the way I did two years ago at Laguna Seca after people kept saying I couldn’t win on a road course.”

Mears and Fittipaldi will both be in new cars built of carbon fiber in Penske’s plant in Poole, England.

“The course in Australia gave us a good line on what to expect from Long Beach,” Mears said. “They had longer straightaways, but there wasn’t a fast corner on the circuit, much like Long Beach. I’m real anxious to get our car on the track and see what we have.”

Practice and qualifying begins Friday on the Long Beach street circuit with more of the same Saturday. The 95-lap race over an 11-turn, 1.67-mile course will start at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Fittipaldi, who finished second to Al Unser Jr. in last year’s Long Beach race, said he hated to lose Sullivan as a teammate but that having fewer cars makes it easier on the team.

“The three of us got along great together, but when one of us made a change on our car and it worked, it meant that the crew had to make the change on six cars because the primary cars and the backups were all interchangeable. From a team standpoint, it was a very heavy burden.”

MOTORCYCLES--Two important road races will be conducted this weekend at Willow Springs Raceway by the Western Eastern Roadracers’ Assn. A 24-hour race in the WERA National Endurance series will start at 3 p.m. Friday, featuring Team Suzuki Endurance (formerly Team Hammer), which ran a record 2207.5 miles last year at Willow Springs.

On Sunday will be the second round of the WERA Pro Series, highlighted by races for the unlimited Formula USA and the new Pro Formula II classes. Formula USA was started in 1985 by Bill Huth, owner of Willow Springs Raceway, and turned into a national series in 1989. Riders include Robbie Petersen, winner of the season opener at Road Atlanta; Mike Smith, last year’s series champion from Team Yoshimura Suzuki; Kurt Hall and Donald Jacks of Team Suzuki; Scott Russell of Team Muzzy Kawasaki, and Kenny Roberts Jr. and Alan Scott of world champion Wayne Rainey’s new team.

STOCK CARS--Three Southern California tracks--Saugus Speedway, Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino and Cajon Speedway in El Cajon--are among 90 NASCAR-sanctioned facilities that will open the 10th Winston Racing Series this weekend. The series determines a national short track champion with drivers competing for eight regional championships under a system that awards points based on their best 20 of 22 finishes. Defending champion is Max Prestwood Jr. of Lenoir, N.C.

Saugus, Orange Show and Cajon, all of which race Saturday night, are in the Sunbelt Region with tracks in Las Vegas, Tucson, Houston, San Antonio, Bolivar, Mo.; Waco, Tex.; Huntsville, Ala.; Royse City, Tex.; and Barberville, Fla. Seven other California tracks, all in the north, are in the Pacific Coast Region.

Saugus will feature a train race this week after the sportsman, street stock oval and Figure 8s, jalopies and mini-stocks. . . . Although rain washed out Santa Maria Speedway’s practice last week, the stock car and dirt car season is scheduled to start Saturday night with the Bud Stanfield Memorial for late model cars.

MIDGETS--After an evening in which 10 cars flipped during the opening night program last week, the ESPN Saturday Night Thunder series for United States Auto Club midgets will return to Ventura Raceway this week for the second of four 30-lap races. Sleepy Tripp, one of five drivers to flip last week, will return in quest of the USAC midget record for wins. Tripp and the late Rich Vogler have 131 national and regional wins. A 20-lap TQ main event is also scheduled.

DRAG RACING--Although Darrell Alderman, National Hot Rod Assn. pro stock champion, was indicted last week on a cocaine charge by a Kentucky grand jury, he will continue to drive his Dodge in NHRA events, including Sunday’s Winston Invitational at Rockingham, N.C. Alderman, who is out on $10,000 bail after pleading not guilty, was charged with “conspiracy to distribute and knowingly possessing with intent to distribute cocaine during a period from August 1990 through February 1991.” Alderman won 15 consecutive races this season, starting with the Winternationals at Pomona before losing in the final round March 3 in Houston.

The Golden State eighth-mile drag racing championships are Saturday at Inyokern Airport. . . . The Pro Gas Assn. will conduct racing Saturday at Bakersfield Raceway. . . . The Chrysler Power Nationals are this weekend at L.A. County Raceway in Palmdale.

SPEEDWAY BIKES--Junior riders on 250cc speedway motorcycles return to the Orange County Fairgrounds Friday night to share billing with the 500cc veterans.

INTERNATIONAL--Richard Hearn of Pasadena finished seventh in the opening race of the Formula Renault series on the Nogaro circuit in France. . . . Jeff Krosnoff of Flintridge, who is competing on the Japanese Formula 3000 circuit, had the fastest lap during time trials at the newly revamped Mine course and earned himself a ride with one of the Jaguar teams at LeMans.

MISCELLANY-- Indy car veteran Roberto Guerrero, sidelined while looking for a new ride, has been added to the field for the Toyota pro/celebrity race Saturday during the Grand Prix of Long Beach. He replaces former world champion Jody Scheckter in the 10-lap race in Celica Liftbacks. . . . The California Racing Assn. will hold back-to-back races Friday and Saturday nights at Silver Dollar Speedway in Chico.