Motor Racing / Pat Ray : Mears Wants Final Touch on Riverside’s End

Quite possibly, nobody will miss Riverside International Raceway more than Roger Mears, who will help write the facility’s final chapter this weekend in the Stroh’s SCORE Off-Road World Championships.

As he has for the last 15 years, Mears will race and the chances are pretty good that he will win. He’ll drive Nissan trucks in Sunday’s Mini-Metal Challenge and the desert mini-pickup race. On Saturday, he will drive a single-seat buggy in that day’s feature event.

His record of 20 victories in 15 SCORE off-road events cannot be topped, but the Bakersfield veteran would like to make it at least 21.

“Come to think of it, 23 would be best of all,” he said Wednesday. “I guess that sounds greedy, but there is no point racing if you don’t think you can win.”

Not only is his victory mark safe, so is his other record. He has raced off-road 47 times at Riverside and if he starts all three scheduled events this weekend that figure will hit an even 50.

“Riverside has been good to us,” he said. “If I had my choice of what off-road race to run, I pick Riverside every week. It has just the right combination, a cross between stadium racing and desert racing.

“It has the stand-on-it attitude of stadium racing, but those races are so short you can’t depend on your driving ability to carry you. At Riverside, you have the time and room to set up the other drivers. Desert racing is wide open, no tight corners and plenty of room, but it is so long. Riverside is just right.”

Of all his victories, Mears remembers his first one most fondly. He went wheel to wheel against Parnelli Jones in an open-wheel single seater in 1974 and came out a winner.

“I had just met Parnelli,” Mears said. “He was my hero and I was just thrilled to have a car that enabled me to race with him. We had a good race. He bumped me a few times and I bumped him back and I think I gained some respect from him.”

Another highlight occurred in 1980, when Mears drove a mini-pickup built by engineering students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to victory.

“I’ll never forget the winner’s circle,” Mears said. “Here were all these college kids, so delirious over winning they were crying. It was a very emotional moment.”

No doubt. But it may not match the emotion should Mears pull off another victory Sunday.

His famous racing brother, defending Indy 500 champion Rick, won the first off-road feature at Riverside in 1973 and nothing would suit Roger more than to win the last one.

STOCK CARS--Mark Norris of Ramona will be trying for his seventh straight super-stock victory Saturday night at Cajon Speedway. If he can pull it off, Norris will match the record set by Russ Bullen in 1966 and matched by Ed Hale in 1983. Joining the super-stocks on the program will be street, pony and bomber stocks. . . . A 100-lap double-points race for NASCAR sportsman cars will highlight Saturday night racing at Saugus Speedway. Also scheduled is a 20-lap feature for mini-stocks, plus train racing on the Figure 8 course. . . . Saugus will be dark Friday night, and hobby and mini-stocks will begin the first of a three-week vacation at Ventura Raceway during the county fair.

SPRINT CARS--Lealand McSpadden, who has won the last two Parnelli Jones Firestone/California Racing Assn. main events, will be at Knoxville, Iowa, this weekend competing in the U.S. Nationals for winged sprinters, when the rest of the CRA non-winged machines make their debut at Kings Speedway in Hanford Friday night and then return to Ascot Saturday night. Set to challenge the Southern Californians on Hanford’s third-mile oval will be Brent Kaeding of Campbell, Calif., and Glen Hopper of San Jose. Jack Hewitt of Ohio will drive a local car at Hanford.

Billy Boat of Arizona, who replaced Bubby Jones in Jack Gardner’s Skoal Bandit car, suffered a broken leg in a flip last Saturday at Ascot during a heat.

In McSpadden’s ninth victory of the season last Saturday night, he passed race-long leader Walt Kennedy going down the back straight of the final lap after a restart caused by a Danny Lewis-Keith Chrisco tangle. Both Lewis and Chrisco were suspended for 30 days when they resorted to fisticuffs after their crash.

MOTORCYCLES--Sam Ermolenko of Cypress will make the rounds of the Southland speedway tracks this week on a busman’s holiday from British Speedway League competition. He started Wednesday night at Inland Speedway in San Bernardino in the Bruce Penhall Classic and will be at Ascot tonight and Costa Mesa on Friday night.

Ermolenko is the only U.S. qualifier for the World Speedway final at Votjen, Denmark. He competed last Saturday night in the Intercontinental Final in Sweden and just made it into the field, taking the final position and becoming the first American to qualify for four straight world finals. Ermolenko’s race tonight will be a tuneup for next weekend’s two-day USA vs. the World competition that will be held on both the tiny South Bay Raceway oval and Ascot Park’s half-mile track.

Scheduled to join Ermolenko on the U.S. squad are the Moran brothers, Shawn and Kelly, Ronnie Correy and Randy Green, all of whom are riding in Britain. Bob Ott of Redondo Beach was scheduled to be the sixth man, but he was injured last Friday at Costa Mesa and may not be able to race. Phil Collins of England, who has been riding here for most of the last two years, heads the European team that also includes Preban Eriksen of Denmark, Jeremy Doncaster of England, Armando Castagna of Italy, Phil Crump of Australia and Kai Niemi of Finland.

Motocross riders of the Continental Motosports Club will compete in the final two Dodge Summer Series programs this weekend. They will race Friday night at Ascot Park and on Sunday at Perris Raceway.

MIDGET CARS--The United States Auto Club’s Western States series will resume Saturday night at Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale, and then move to Ascot Park on Sunday evening. Point leader Sleepy Tripp, who was unable to keep his U.S. Nationals midget title last week at Belleville, Kan., when he was knocked out of the main event by car problems, is expected to be back from his Midwest journey, during which he won only one race.

Also due back are Tommy White, Bob Crisp, Wally Pankratz and Robby Flock, whose fifth-place finish in the feature was the best of the Southern Californians. Also competing Sunday night will be Ron Shuman and Chuck Gurney, who are teammates on Ed Ulyate’s sprint car team. . . . The three-quarter midgets of USAC will share Sunday’s night program at Ascot. They also race Friday night at Paso Robles.

SAND DRAGS--The United Sand Assn. will hold its second night racing program at Glen Helen OHV Park in San Bernardino this Saturday. Headlining the field, which is expected to draw entrants from California, Arizona and Nevada, will be the pro-comp alcohol dragsters. Tuneups for all classes start at 8 a.m. with elimination for pee-wee, junior and sports brackets at 3 p.m. Pros will start at 7.

NEWSWORTHY--Riverside Raceway isn’t the only California race track closing this year. Baylands Raceway Park in Fremont, the state’s busiest track, has announced it will close Nov. 27. Track President Terry Kniss said that the facility, which has scheduled about 270 races a year, had no choice when Southern Pacific Development Co., which owns the 170-acre facility alongside the Nimitz Freeway, exercised an option in the lease arrangement to close the track at the end of the 1988 racing season. . . . Geoff Brabham and his Nissan GTP prototype will try to run their winning streak to eight straight in the California Grand Prix at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma.