MOTOR RACING : Andretti Isn’t Riding His Name

Last Nov. 1, Jim Hall welcomed John Andretti to Midland, Tex., for the birth of an Indy car racing team.

Hall had been an Indy car owner before, having helped Al Unser win the 1978 and Johnny Rutherford the 1980 Indianapolis 500s, but he retired nine years ago. Now he was coming out of retirement to take another shot with financier Count Rudy van der Straten, engine builder Franz Weis and Hall’s son, Jim II, as partners on the Hall/VDS team.

He selected Andretti, nephew of Mario and cousin of Michael, to drive for the team. Andretti became available when Porsche, for whom he drove and tested with moderate success for a year, pulled the plug on its Indy car program in favor of Formula One.

“When I arrived in Midland, all I saw was an empty, unpainted building, a year-old car that Al Unser Jr. had driven last year, and two mechanics who had arrived that day,” Andretti recalled. “They were the only employees the team had at the time. We didn’t have a transporter, pit equipment, tools or anything. We were starting right from scratch.”

Which made it all the more amazing when John Andretti and the yellow Pennzoil Lola Chevrolet won the opening race of the 1991 PPG/CART Indy car season two weeks ago at Surfers Paradise in Australia.

“We took a week off for Christmas, but outside of that, the whole team worked every day from Nov. 1 until we left for Australia,” Andretti said.

“Jim Hall believes in working and testing and working and testing. I was testing at Big Spring, Tex., on Jan. 12, and I tested the new car there as soon as it arrived from England, and at Firebird and PIR in Phoenix. We put on 2,000 miles, which was more than any other team, including Penske, had done before Australia.”

The win was the first in 39 Indy car starts for Andretti, who turned 28 the previous Tuesday. However, he won in Australia before, with a midget in January, 1988, at Brisbane.

In the Gold Coast Grand Prix, the first race held by CART outside North America, John Andretti capitalized on a series of bad breaks that sidelined or slowed Al Unser Jr., Michael Andretti and Rick Mears.

Unser was taken out by a three-car crash involving Eddie Cheever and Mario Andretti when Unser was unable to get through a narrow portion of the seaside track without spinning.

Michael Andretti was leading late in the race when he lost his brakes and had to stop.

That left Mears, a three-time Indy 500 champion and three-time national champion, and John Andretti running 1-2. Four laps from the finish, Mears was blinded by the setting sun and missed a turn while trying to pass the slower cars of Dean Hall and Randy Lewis. He shot down an emergency runoff exit. Before he could back up and resume racing, Andretti went by.

“I didn’t know I was ahead,” Andretti said. “I knew I was chasing Rick and I didn’t figure I could catch him, but when I got through the turn and couldn’t see him up ahead, I was really thrown for a loop. The sun that got in his eyes kept me from seeing what was happening in the corner, but I was sure I wasn’t going so slow that he had gone out of sight. It wasn’t until later that (team manager) Larry (Curry) told me over the radio that I was ahead.”

Some observers hinted that John might have lucked into the victory, but Emerson Fittipaldi, a two-time world champion and 1989 Indy 500 winner, thought otherwise.

“John drove a careful race, an intelligent race, and when everything got sorted out, he was in the right place to capitalize on it,” Fittipaldi said. “He could easily have made a mistake and lost it, but he didn’t. You must remember that he was under a lot of pressure, carrying the Andretti family name, driving for Hall and Pennzoil, an owner and a sponsor with winning reputations, for the first time.

“With a background like that, finishing second is not enough to still the critics. I am very happy for John that he got his first win. I like to see a young man as dedicated to our sport as he is do well.”

Outside of his crew and his wife, the first person to congratulate John was his Uncle Mario.

“Having him there for my first win really made me feel good,” John said. “My dad (Mario’s twin) couldn’t be there, so it was nice that Mario came over and congratulated me. Michael has won races, too, but Mario is still the King in the family.”

Jeff Andretti, 26, Mario’s youngest son, finished seventh in his first race with Bruce Leven’s Havoline team and only his second Indy car race.

“Who would have believed it, before the race, that John would win and I would beat both Dad and Michael,” Jeff said.

John Andretti credits much of his team’s success to the crew put together in haste by Hall and Curry.

“Most of the guys came from the sprint car ranks, like I did,” Andretti said. “That’s where we had our roots, at places like Ascot. I’d met Dave Brzozowski, my crew chief, about 10 years ago when I was hanging around the midget shops at home (in Indianapolis) and he was just starting out as a mechanic.”

Brzozowski, from La Habra, grew up working on his father’s sprint cars between 1957 and ‘84, when their drivers were Ascot favorites such as Bob East, Don Hawley and Eddie Wirth. Other California Racing Assn. alumni include Tim Broyles of Whittier, who was CRA mechanic of the year in 1987 when Frank Lewis won the car owner’s championship with drivers Mike Sweeney and Walt Kennedy; Ken Doughty of San Diego, who crewed for Billy Felts last year the night he won at Cajon Speedway, and Ken Koldsbaek of Huntington Beach, who worked with Jeff Heywood and Wirth.

“That’s a lot of Californians, isn’t it?” Andretti said. “A funny thing happened the weekend I won in Australia. Ken Schrader won the Winston Cup stock car race in Atlanta. A couple of years ago, we both drove Cary Agajanian’s 98 Jr. at Ascot.”

Andretti’s next race will be the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on a tighter but similar street course to Australia’s on April 14.

STOCK CARS--The 1991 season will open Saturday night at Saugus Speedway with NASCAR street stocks, jalopies, mini stocks and a destruction derby. The big sportsman and hobby stocks will make their debut on April 13. . . . Opening night will also be Saturday at San Bernardino’s Orange Show Speedway, where Ron Meyer will open defense of his sportsman track championship against former street stock champions Ron Peterson and Steve Swiderski. . . . Late model and modified cars will race Saturday night at Bakersfield’s Mesa Marin Raceway.

Winston West drivers have agreed to a pair of races in Japan in April of 1992, which will be the first NASCAR-type stock car races ever held there. They will race on road courses, one on Fuji Raceway, near Tokyo, and the other on a new 2.25-mile course near Kyoto in central Japan.

SPEEDWAY BIKES--The 23rd season of weekly racing at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa will start Friday night with U. S. champion Mike Faria opening the Coors Light series against such veterans as Bobby Schwartz, Brad Oxley, Steve Lucero and Alan Christian, all former U.S. champions. The format will be the same as last season with first, second and third division riders competing in scratch and handicap races. . . . Speedway USA will open in Victorville Saturday night.

MIDGETS--Defending Western States champion Sleepy Tripp will continue his quest to become the winningest driver in United States Auto Club midget racing history Saturday night at Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale. Tripp has 130 victories in USAC national and regional races. The late Rich Vogler had 131. The Bakersfield program also includes a TQ main event.

SPRINT CARS--The barnstorming California Racing Assn. travels to Petaluma for a Saturday night race at the Petaluma Fair Speedway, north of San Francisco. . . . The CRA has canceled all its 1991 races on asphalt, including Mesa Marin, prefering to remain a dirt track racing organization.

SPORTS CARS--The Cal Club will hold regional championship races Saturday and Sunday at Willow Springs Raceway. . . . The Porsche Owners Club will conduct time trials April 6-7 on the Willow Springs road course and April 14 on the Streets of Willow, a street-course circuit.