GOLDEN OLDIE

As part of its Golden Anniversary celebration, NASCAR named its 50 greatest drivers, from Bobby Allison to the late LeeRoy Yarbrough, from the 1949 days of races on the sand beach at Daytona to this year’s superspeedways like the new track in Fontana.

“These are the men who define the competition of our sport,” said Bill France Jr., president of NASCAR, at an induction ceremony in Daytona Beach, Fla. “Their accomplishments are the benchmark that much of our history is identified by.”

There is one glaring omission.

Dan Gurney, more than anyone else the driver who helped NASCAR spread its wings from the provincial Southeast to the West Coast, is not among the 50.

“Dan Gurney is the man who put Riverside on the map,” says Les Richter, a longtime NASCAR vice president and former Riverside International Raceway president. “And Riverside was NASCAR in California for 25 years.”

Gurney won four consecutive races at Riverside from 1963 to 1966, then won a fifth in 1968. His winning percentage in Winston Cup racing is a remarkable .312, five wins in 16 races.

There was no automatic shifter on race cars in those days, so Richter calculated that in 191 laps around Riverside’s nine-turn course, Gurney hit the brakes 1,719 times and shifted manually 2,101 times.

“I was fortunate to be with a high-level team like the Wood Brothers,” Gurney said. “They pretended they were hillbillies from Stuart, Va., but as far as race crews were concerned, they were several steps ahead of the other teams.”

Gurney said he also felt like an outsider, even when racing at Riverside, against the “good ol’ boys” from the Carolinas.

“There was a lot of West Coast vs. East Coast talk and I know it bothered those guys who came out here with their big reputations and couldn’t beat us,” Gurney said.

West Coast drivers won for six straight years before Richard Petty broke through in 1969. In 1967, a year when Gurney failed to win, Parnelli Jones did.

“I remember when Curtis Turner came out here [in 1966] with the sole idea of getting me,” Gurney recalled. “Max Muhleman, a friend of Turner’s, told me that he called it his mission.

“The first time I saw Curtis, he had a week’s growth of beard, looked wasted and said he’d been in Las Vegas. He had a reputation as a wild one, but once the race started he was all business.

“He started out by trying to shadow me, watching to see how I got around the track. I knew what he was doing so I slowed down, then slowed some more until he finally got frustrated and went around me going into Turn 3. When he got there, he was going about 20 mph too fast and he completely lost it.

“It was one of the greatest things I’d seen racing, watching him save it. He was fabulous. It was like he was on dirt, the way he threw the car around and got it headed up the hill. It didn’t slow him down, though, and before long he hit a bump so hard it tore the car apart.”

The result: Gurney first, Turner fourth.

In 1970 Gurney ended his racing career after a Trans-Am race at Riverside.

Almost, that is.

One of those 16 Winston Cup races Gurney ran was after he had been retired for 10 years and, in 1980, at 48, decided after two years of talking about it to give it one more try.

“One day I got a call from Dan, sometime in 1978, and he said he wanted to talk to me about running another race at Riverside,” Richter recalled recently.

“We met at some little restaurant and the first thing I said was, ‘Dan, you’re out of your mind, you’ve been away too long.

“Well, he persisted, saying he wanted to do it, and wanted to do it seriously. So I told him to go to Bob Bondurant’s driving school at Sears Point and see how he did. When I called Bob to get the results, Bondurant said, ‘It’s not like what you want to hear. He’s as good as he ever was.’

“I still wasn’t convinced. I didn’t think he was physically ready to drive 500Ks [about 310 miles], so I told him I was going to get a couple of rental cars and have him drive around Riverside until he got tired. He kept getting quicker and quicker until finally he came through [Turn] 9 and spun out. It blew all four tires. That was the end of that test.”

In the race, Gurney drove a Chevy for Rod Osterlund as a teammate of a rookie named Dale Earnhardt.

Why did he do it?

“Why not? was my reply,” Gurney said, grinning. “Looking back, it was probably a mid-life crisis. Memory can be very selective. I discarded all the bad memories. I also had forgotten how dangerous it was to go through Turn 9 at 160 mph.

“It was a lot of fun, though. I wouldn’t admit it then, but now I can say it was physically more than I was ready for. When the car quit [on the 79th lap], I wasn’t too upset.”

As fate would have it, the car quit going into Turn 6, right where Gurney’s wife, Evi, and their 5-year-old son, Alex, were watching. Now 23, Alex is the racing Gurney these days. He’s in the Barber Dodge Pro Series after having won the Team Kool Green scholarship.

The crowd at the crest of the hill above Turn 6 cheered lustily as their hero crawled out of his car, climbed to the roof of a motor home and waved. Darrell Waltrip won the race, but few cared. As far as they were concerned, Gurney was the winner.

Some of NASCAR’s chosen 50 do not appear to match up with Gurney, who was a winner in Formula One competition before climbing through the window of Holman & Moody’s Ford for the first time in 1963.

Take for instance, Jerry Cook, Jack Ingram, Ray Hendrick and Richie Evans, none of whom won a race on the main NASCAR circuit. Cook, Hendrick and Evans did their winning on the Featherlite modified tour, and Ingram was a big winner in what is now the Busch Grand National circuit.

Or how about Red Farmer, who did not win in 36 Winston Cup starts, but gained notoriety as a charter member of the legendary Alabama Gang along with Bobby, Davey and Donnie Allison--who also was surprisingly not among the honored 50--from Hueytown, Ala.

Or Hershel McGriff, who was a big winner in Winston West and had four Winston Cup wins in 1954, but was probably selected because he and Big Bill France, NASCAR’s founder, drove together in a Mexican Road Race.

Said Roger Penske of Gurney, “This man is a racing icon.”

FELIX’S FOLLIES

Maybe it wasn’t all Robby Gordon’s fault after all last year when he quit Felix Sabates’ Team Sabco after only 20 of 32 Winston Cup races. By mutual agreement, Sabates and Wally Dallenbach Jr., Gordon’s replacement, ended their relationship after only nine races.

Veteran Morgan Shepherd will replace Dallenbach in this week’s California 500, and Trans-Am champion Tom Kendall will drive Sabates’ car in two road races, June 28 at Sears Point and Aug. 9 at Watkins Glen, N.Y.

HOLLYWOOD GALA

One hundred tickets will be made available to the public for tonight’s “NASCAR’s Night in Hollywood--A Golden Celebration,” at the Wiltern Theatre. Tickets may be obtained through the Coca-Cola Refreshment Pit Crew Contest area at the theater starting at 5:30 p.m.

The two-hour show, featuring Hollywood celebrities and NASCAR drivers past and present, will start at 8. It will be shown Saturday night on ESPN at 7.

LAST LAPS

There will be 15,777 more reserved grandstand seats than there were for last year’s California 500, raising the total figure to 86,429. The new stands are extended along the front stretch toward Turn 1. More than 100,000 are anticipated, counting infield general admission ticket holders. . . . Posted awards money totals $2,343,914.

Want a manicure or a massage? A concierge service will debut this week at California Speedway for the team motor coach, VIP motor coach and media areas. Services include dinner reservations and transportation to area restaurants, dry cleaning, 24-hour fitness-health club and a manicurist and a masseuse. It will be open from 7 to 7 all three racing days.

The next racing date for Fontana is a two-day tripleheader June 18-19 with Craftsman trucks, Winston West and Busch Grand National cars. . . . The awards dinner for the Busch series will be held, for the first time on the West Coast, Jan. 8, 1999, at the Regent Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills.