For Andersons, It’s a Family Affair

The Anderson family of Covina has put a new spin on the adage about the family playing together staying together. Their slogan: The family that races together wins together.

Randy Anderson, 29, won the Winston Racing Series alcohol funny-car championship last Sunday, an event his father, Brad, has won three times. It made him the first second-generation drag racer in the National Hot Rod Assn. to win a championship.

Shelly Anderson, 27, Randy’s sister, became the fourth woman to win an NHRA top-fuel event--joining Shirley Muldowney, Lucille Lee and Lori Johns--when she won last month at Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pa.

Brad is crew chief on both cars. Carol, Shelly and Randy’s mother, is team manager, and Leigh Ann, their sister, manages the Anderson’s related manufacturing business in Ontario.

“We’ve been going to drag races together ever since Randy and I were babies,” Shelly said. “When there’s a race, and my dad or Randy or I were racing, there was never any discussion about going or not going. We just all went. Period.”

The one time Randy couldn’t make one of Shelly’s races--he was at his own race several thousand miles away--was the day she won.

“I was in Denver, for a divisional race, and just before we packed up to leave the track, I heard Shelly was in the final round,” Randy said. “We were headed for Oklahoma when we stopped at a restaurant in some little town and I called my girlfriend (who works for the NHRA). When she told me Shelly had won, I really made a fool of myself, yelling across the restaurant, ‘She won! She won!’ People must have thought it was really nuts.”

The Denver race marked the only time Randy has raced without his family there to support him.

“It was a terrible feeling,” he said. “The worst part was not knowing where things--tools and stuff like that--were in the rig. I could be blindfolded and know where things were in my dad’s rig, but I went to Denver with another guy. His stuff was neat and all that, but it was unsettling to me not to know where things were without looking.”

Anderson, who will race this week in the Winston Finals at Pomona, lost in the second round when a victory would have clinched the series championship. That meant he had to race last Sunday at Firebird Raceway, near Phoenix. There, he had to advance through two rounds to score enough points to beat Bob Newberry of Schenectady, N.Y., for the championship. For good measure, he won all four rounds to clinch not only the national title but also the Division 5 regional championship.

“What a relief,” he said. “It was nice to wrap it up and head for Pomona as champion, but I didn’t like having to do it in the final race. But it’s over, and now we’re thinking about Pomona. It never stops. A driver’s never satisfied as long as there’s another race ahead.”

Alcohol class championships are won through a combination of national and divisional races. Randy won four nationals and four of six divisionals.

Shelly will be at Pomona, too, looking for another victory against the likes of Eddie Hill, the new champion; Joe Amato, Kenny Bernstein, Scott Kalitta and the rest of the top-fuel field.

Before she won at Maple Grove, Shelly had failed to qualify in four consecutive events.

“The joke in the pits was that crewmen wanted to come to work for us because they’d get Sundays off,” Brad Anderson said with a smile.

No NHRA driver had ever won after failing to qualify the four previous times.

“After Indy (the U.S. Nationals), we stayed over a couple of days and tested,” Brad said. “We had some early success in the season, but then we seemed to be taking a step backwards. We couldn’t seem to finish. I knew Shelly could get the job done if we could just get her to the end of the track. We found some things testing and went to Maple Grove feeling better about ourselves.”

Shelly qualified 13th and drew Tommy Johnson Jr. in the first round.

“When I ran 4.89 (elapsed seconds for the quarter mile) and it was low ET of the round, I felt like I was in for a good day,” Shelly said. “T.J. had second-low ET and lost, so I felt good about my reaction times.”

She beat Pat Dakin in the second round when he fouled, which put her against Hill in the semifinals.

“I’d raced Eddie twice before in the semis and he’d beaten me both times,” she said. “I know him pretty well because he uses my dad’s cylinder heads, but I was really nervous because I’d never been beyond the semis.”

She drove a perfect race, beating the veteran Hill off the line and getting to the finish in 4.956 seconds, to Hill’s 5.127.

“After that, I wasn’t real nervous in the finals,” she said. “Dad said the car would run in the low 4.90s, so I just ran my race.”

Another veteran, Mike Dunn, driving Darrell Gwynn’s car, was her opponent in the final round. Once again, she had the quickest reaction time and beat Dunn by the narrowest of margins, 4.984 to 4.993.

Her top speed was 289.48 m.p.h. in the first round.

“I’m real proud of her,” her father said. “She wasn’t responsible for all those DNQs. Those were my fault, trying to learn how to run a dragster after all those years with funny cars, not Shelly’s.”

It was Shelly’s second national victory. In 1992, she won the Southern Nationals alcohol dragster title.

“One of the first people I heard from after winning at Maple Grove was Shirley (Muldowney). She sent me a nice note,” Shelly said. “I never have thought of myself as a female racer, just a racer, but I do appreciate what Shirley did in paving the way for women who want to race. She was the ultimate pioneer and to think she won three world championships! That’s just awesome.”

Qualifying for the $1.17-million Winston Finals will start today at 1:30 p.m., with professional rounds also scheduled for 1:30 Friday and 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Final eliminations are Sunday, starting at 10:30 a.m.

STOCK CARS--The sixth annual return of NASCAR Winston Cup racing to Phoenix International Raceway this weekend will feature the championship battle Sunday between Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace in the Slick 50 500. On Saturday, the final race of the Featherlite Southwest Tour features champion Ron Hornaday Jr. against such tour veterans as defending race winner Ken Schraeder, Dick Trickle, Ted Musgrave and Bobby Labonte. Hornaday will come back in the Slick 50 race in the car driven this season by Bill Sedgwick to challenge the Winston Cup regulars.

MOTORCYCLES--Motocross champion Mike Kiedrowski of Acton, winner of the American Motorcyclist Assn. 500cc championship for Team Kawasaki, is the fifth and final nominee for the AMA athlete-of-the-year award, joining Sam Ermolenko, Ricky Graham, Jeremy McGrath, Doug Polen and Kevin Schwantz. The winner will be named at the AMA awards banquet Nov. 20 at the Long Beach Sheraton.

SPRINT CARS--Steve Kinser won his 13th World of Outlaws championship in 16 years when he ran second to Dave Blaney, his closest challenger for the title, in the final race last Sunday at Devil’s Bowl Speedway in Mesquite, Tex. Blaney has entered the Turkey Night Midget Grand Prix Nov. 25 at Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale, where he will face defending champion Ron Shuman, a seven-time winner of the event.

OFF-ROAD--Glen Helen Park in San Bernardino will be the site of the Halloween Haunt race Sunday over a twisting three-mile course designed by veteran off-roader Bud Feldkamp.