Motor Racing / Shav Glick : Kendall Hopes Switch Won’t Change His Luck
The last time Tom Kendall made a switch, he had just won his second straight International Motor Sports Assn. GTU championship driving a Mazda. But the switch didn’t hurt him. He moved into an untried Chevrolet Beretta--and won a third championship.
Now the 22-year-old UCLA senior from La Canada Flintridge is switching again, but not his make of car. He is leaving IMSA’s GTU class--for grand touring cars with engine displacement under two liters--to drive a C&C; Beretta in the Sports Car Club of America’s Trans-Am series.
Making the move with Kendall, a member of the 1988 racing writers All-American team, will be his long-time teammate, Max Jones of Long Beach. Jones, the 1987 SCCA race truck champion, finished third in GTU last season.
The Trans-Am season will begin April 15 as part of the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend, featuring Indy cars on the following day.
This weekend, Kendall will take a trial run in the Beretta in an IMSA GTO race at the Grand Prix of Miami, a street race along the shores of Biscayne Bay.
“It will be pretty much last year’s car with a new (and larger) engine plugged in,” Kendall said before leaving for Florida. “It’s mainly to give us an idea what to expect from the larger engine.”
The Beretta, which was powered by a three-liter Chevrolet V-6 last year when Kendall and Jones won seven of 11 races and the GTU manufacturer’s championship, will have a 4.5-liter V-6 engine for the Miami race and the Trans-Am. Last year’s win was the first for a domestic car maker in IMSA’s 18-year history.
“We’ll be the underdogs in Trans-Am, but we were the underdogs at the start of last year, too,” Kendall said. “We really thought it would take a couple of years before we could win in GTU, but when we accomplished our goal the first year, C&C; decided to take another step up.”
Audi Quatrro won the Trans-Am manufacturer’s championship last year, with Hurley Haywood, an Audi dealer from Ponte Vedra, Fla., winning the individual crown. The veteran Haywood, who has won four 24-hour races at Daytona and two at Le Mans, won only two of the 100-mile sprints but he finished in the top four in nine of 13 races. So far this year, however, Audi has not announced plans to defend its championship.
“For me, personally, Trans-Am is another step toward my ultimate goal, getting into an Indy car program,” Kendall said. “Five of the Trans-Am races will be run with CART Indy cars, so I’ll get plenty of exposure, and with the way Chevrolet motors performed last year, I can’t help but feel good.”
Chevrolet-powered cars won 14 of 15 Indy car races last season.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if an engine does well in one series, it should do well in the next one,” Kendall said. “This year will be important for me because I will get some higher horsepower experience. The other thing I need is some oval track experience. I need to get a feel for it if I want to get an Indy car ride.”
Kendall has driven in only two oval races, both in Formula Russell in 1985, when he was only 18.
Although Kendall will drive the ’88 model Beretta in the Miami race, he and Jones will have new models for the Trans-Am, along with full technical support from Chevrolet.
Kendall also is taking 16 units of economics at UCLA en route to graduation next year. He has a 2.9 grade-point average.
“I’ll make it, sooner or later, but it’s getting tougher and tougher to make classes, take my exams, and still get to all the races and tests that we have scheduled,” he said.
SPRINT CARS--The California Racing Assn. season will open this weekend at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix with the Walt James Classic, a pair of 30-lap main events Friday and Saturday nights. Walt James was president of the CRA for 21 years. Ron Shuman, of nearby Tempe, Ariz., will open defense of his Parnelli Jones Firestone/CRA championship in a new car. Shuman, who was left without a ride when his car owner, Ed Ulyate, decided not to campaign a car this season, has signed to drive the famous Tamale Wagon, owned by Alex Morales, Inc.
The CRA will race March 11 at Raven Speedway in Tucson before opening Ascot Park’s 1989 season March 18. The non-winged sprinters will compete on 12 different tracks in six states in a 56-race season that will last nine months. Thirty of the races will be at Ascot.
MIDGETS--The United States Auto Club’s Jolly Rancher Candies Western States regional championship series will make its 1989 dirt track debut Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at the Imperial Fairgrounds, near El Centro. The races are part of the California Midwinter Fair.
Indianapolis 500 veterans Rich Vogler and Johnny Parsons are scheduled to compete on the 3/8-mile oval. Vogler set a track record of 17.09 seconds last November, breaking Parsons’ year-old record. The California contingent will be led by Sleepy Tripp, a two-time national champion who has won four regional championships, including last year’s. He won 19 main events last season. Also entered are P.J. Jones, Robby Flock, Wally Pankratz and 1988 Turkey Night Grand Prix winner Chuck Gurney.
MOTORCYCLES--Speedway racers open their season Saturday night in the Coors Extra Gold Spring Series at Long Beach Veterans Stadium. National champion Steve Lucero will face a host of British League veterans, led by Sam Ermolenko. The two-race series will end March 10 at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.
VINTAGE CARS--The fourth annual La Carrera Classic, for cars 10 years old or older, will be held Saturday in Baja California on Highway 3, between Ensenada and San Felipe. Former stuntman Hal Needham set the record of 52 minutes for the 120-mile course last year while driving his NASCAR stock car.
