REVVING UP THE CROWDS

By SHAV GLICK

June 19, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The last time NASCAR Winston Cup stock cars raced in Southern California was June 12, 1988, at Riverside International Raceway. Rusty Wallace was the winner in Raymond Beadle’s Blue Max Pontiac as an estimated 75,000 fans sat in on the famous road racing course’s final hurrah.

This weekend, racing will return to the area with the opening of the $110-million California Speedway in Fontana, built on the the old Kaiser steel mill grounds.

The popularity of NASCAR has risen to heights never dreamed of when Riverside closed. And, if you listen to NASCAR President Bill France, the end isn’t in sight.

“For the last 10 years, we’ve been asking ourselves, ‘How much bigger can we get?’ ” France said at last year’s season-ending party in New York. “We no longer ask that question. NASCAR has become the leader in motor sports racing and entertainment. Now we ask, ‘How much bigger can we make it?’ ”

Attendance in the past nine years has grown 84%, from 3,044,300 in 1988 to 5,588,069 last year, according to the Goodyear Racing Division.

Most in the sport agree that television exposure, which led to increased media coverage of all sports, has played a major role in NASCAR’s growth.

“When I won that race at Riverside in 1988, I’ll bet there weren’t more than four or five reporters from local papers,” Wallace said. “That’s the way it was everywhere we went, except for the Daytona 500. Now, look around, the press room is full of guys from all around the country. We have a pack of writers who go to every race, not just races around their hometown.

“There was some TV back then, but just for the race. Now, TNN is on every night with race updates, interviews and stuff like that. And ESPN has prerace shows before all 32 races like they have for big football games. I think that’s done as much as anything for racing. We have smaller cars, faster cars and stuff like that, but it’s TV and the media that has helped put us where we are.”

Winston Cup racing is the second-highest rated regular sport series on cable TV, according to BusinessWeek, ranked behind only the NFL.

All four TV networks that have carried Winston Cup races this year--CBS, ESPN, TBS and TNN--have set ratings and viewership records. After the first 11 races, cable ratings averaged a 4.9 compared to 3.9 last year. On network TV, the series averaged 6.8, compared to 5.6 overall in 1996.

The 1988 race on ESPN had a 1.7 rating.

Sunday’s race will be televised by Channel 7, one of two Winston Cup races aired by ABC. The other is the Aug. 2 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.

Darrell Waltrip, a three-time Winston Cup champion in his 25th year on the circuit, credits increased recognizability of the drivers with giving the sport a boost.

“Back then [the 1980s], what little TV coverage there was just showed race cars running around the track,” Waltrip said. “Fans knew the numbers, 3 was Earnhardt, 17 was Waltrip, 6 was Martin, 88 was Buddy Baker and so on.

“But outside of Richard [Petty] and his No. 43, no one knew the faces. The big boost came when sponsors began using some of us in their commercials, not racing commercials, but product commercials. Then, people put Dale Earnhardt’s face with No. 3, Darrell Waltrip’s face with No. 17. That gave them more of a rooting interest, feeling like they knew us.

“I would venture that today, because of that, a lot of Winston Cup drivers are as recognizable as just about anyone in any sport, and I mean stick and ball too. Ten years ago, it was just Richard Petty.”

The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. entered the sport in 1971 with a modest investment of $100,000 for a Winston Cup points fund. Petty collected $40,000 for winning the championship. This year the payout will be $4 million, with the champion getting $1.5 million.

The RJR sponsorship did more than line the pockets of successful racers with cash. It showed the corporate world that there was a sport out there where exposure could be lucrative for products other than those automotive related.

“I don’t know if it’s our handsome faces or not, but I do know that in the last 10 years or so, there has been a tremendous increase among women in our audiences,” Waltrip said.

Demographics show that women make up 39% of attendance. Taking note of that, California Speedway has four times as many women’s restrooms as men’s.

The wide following also has helped attract such non-racing sponsors as Tide, Kellogg’s corn flakes, Kodak film, Skittles, Kmart, Family Channel, Pepsi, Circuit City, Spam, McDonald’s and Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouses.

Walt Czarnecki, vice chairman of Penske Motorsports, builders of California Speedway and owners of Fords driven by Rusty Wallace in Winston Cup and open-wheel cars driven by Paul Tracy and Al Unser Jr. in CART, says the vision of NASCAR has changed.

“Not too long ago, our emphasis was on attracting race fans, gearheads, so to speak, to our races,” he said. “Now we’re looking to attract sports fans, the same ones who might watch football, basketball or baseball.

“Our tracks must be built to compete with stadiums and ballparks like Camden Yards and Dodger Stadium, even entertainment centers like Disneyland or Universal Studios. We are not so much in the racing business as we are in the entertainment business. And good racing, like we have in NASCAR, is great entertainment.”

California Speedway, in addition to its 71,000 grandstand seats, has 71 luxury boxes, sold for $120,000 each.

All the seats have been gone for weeks, and interest was so high that twice as many probably could have been sold.

“We took a conservative approach because we didn’t want to be like Ontario Motor Speedway and overbuild at the start,” Roger Penske said. “By next year, we’ll have more than 100,000, and down the road, if all goes well, we have parking and room for 250,000.”

In addition to TV, sponsors gain exposure from 18-wheel rolling billboards that carry cars and equipment from race to race, and serve as a home away from home for drivers and crews. At every race, lined up behind the pits are truck-trailers that serve as mobile garages, and nearby is another group of motor homes where the drivers and their families hang out between practice runs.

“It’s funny, how we all started buying motor homes,” Wallace said. “NASCAR used to have a $100 fine for anyone missing the driver’s meeting. Guys thought nothing of missing the meeting, paying the 100 bucks and forgetting it.

“NASCAR wised up and changed the rules so if you missed the meeting, you started at the rear of the pack. That woke everybody up; it also made lots of guys nervous worrying what if they got stuck in traffic and arrived late.

“The answer was to get a motor home, sleep at the track and have no worries. We soon found out that instead of getting up at 5:30 and sweating out traffic to the track, we could roll out of bed at 9 and not miss a thing.

“Everybody gained from it, the drivers got more sleep and peace of mind, the wives and kids had a place to hang out and the sponsors had another place to hang their message. You’ll notice there are no motor homes with blank sides. And you know what, nearly all the NASCAR officials have their own motor homes too.”

Not everything has changed in the years since the Riverside race in 1988. Twenty of the drivers in that race will be here when qualifying starts Friday for the California 500.

Missing, however, will be Neil Bonnett, Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki, all of whom died in racing-related accidents--Bonnett during practice for a Daytona 500, Allison in a helicopter crash at Talladega, Ala., and Kulwicki in an airplane crash while flying to a race.

If you think nine years hasn’t made a big difference, consider this:

Jeff Gordon, stock car racing’s Wonder Boy who won the 1995 Winston Cup championship and is the points leader this year with six victories, was a 16-year-old junior in high school in Pittsboro, Ind., winning local track championships in his dad’s winged sprint car and racing occasionally with the World of Outlaws.

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Winston Cup Attendance

In millions

‘96: 5.6

‘95: 5.3

‘94: 4.9

‘93: 4.0

‘92: 3.7

‘91: 3.4

‘90: 3.3

‘89: 3.1

‘88: 3.0 (1988, last race in Riverside)