Editor’s Note: In a nod to our 92 years of history, each week SPEED SPORT will look back at the top stories from 20, 40 and 60 years ago as told in the pages of National Speed Sport News.
20 Years Ago — 2006
News: Kasey Kahne Racing has lured championship-winning crew chief Ricky Warner to call the shots on the No. 9 sprint car driven by Joey Saldana in the World of Outlaws Sprint Series next season.
Warner leaves Schatz Motorsports, where he helped driver Donny Schatz to the WoO title arid a victory in the Knoxville Nationals. Saldana finished third in the championship.
“I’ve known the Kahne family for a long time,” Wamer said. “We met when we were all sprint car racing, and I was a car chief for Evernham Motorsports in the Busch Series before returning to sprint cars in the summer of 2005. Kasey has a solid organization in place, and I look forward to helping him, Wally (Kahne, managing director}, Joey and the rest of the team take the next step.”
Winners: Heart-pounding action. Heart-stopping drama Heartbreaking endings. Heart-felt sentiments.
All that characterized Sunday’s eliminations at the Automobile Club of Southern California Finals, in which Tony Schumacher completed a phenomenal comeback to win the National Hot Rod Ass’n’s Top Fuel championship literally in the final five seconds of the 23-race schedule.
With previously eliminated point-leader Doug Kalitta watching from the top end of the track, Schumacher and the U.S. Army dragster pulled off the impossible scenario of beating final-round foe and teammate Melanie Troxel and doing it with a national elapsed-time record worth 20 points.
A stunned Kalitta, who had led the standings since July, saw his bid for a first championship fizzle among the fireworks that followed Schumacher’s 4.428-second blast down the Auto Club Raceway quarter-mile strip at 327.98 miles per hour.
John Force reclaimed his Funny car dominance, winning the event and his unparalleled 14th championship. Along the way; in the quarter- finals, he aced out Ron Capps, who had led much of the season and was poised for a run at his first title after being a three-time bridesmaid.
Ultimately, Force’s closest challenger -112 points back- turned out to be Robert Hight, his son-in-law, Castrol/ Auto Club of Southern California Ford teammate and torch-bearer of Force’s Next Generation.
40 Years Ago — 1986
News: STP’s “dayglo” red and the famed Granatelli name will be back in Indy car racing next season.
Vincent Granatelli, eldest son of former STP president Andy Granatelli, announced that he is buying part of the True Value Emerson Electric team from Dan Cotter.
Granatelli said Colombian Roberto Guerrero, who lost the Nissan Miami Challenge on the last lap when he ran out of fuel, will be retained as the team’s driver.
Granatelli added that he also would like to retain the services of chief mechanic Phil Casey, though not deal has been struck.
Granatelli will move to Indianapolis and oversee the team operations personally. Headquarters will remain in the same garages on Gasoline Alley near Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Morris Nunn will move over from Newman-Haas and serve as the team manager.
Winners: Bobby Rahal captured the 1986 CART PPG Indy Car World Series championship Sunday in the Nissan Miami Indy Challenge as AI Unser, Jr. took the victory — just a year late.
Roberto Guerrero had the field covered and led 111 of the 112 laps, only to run out of fuel on the final circuit as the younger Unser roared by him to the checkered flag.
“I wanted to die right there,” said the luckless Guerrero, “It was the most disappointing moment of my life.”
After being assured of the title when Michael Andretti dropped out, Rahal suffered stomach cramps in the cockpit of the Budweiser-Truesports March and slid back from second to an eighth-place finish.
But his was a happy kind of sickness as he nailed down the PPG Cup and the $300,000 that goes with it.
The 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner knew he had locked the title up when chief mechanic Steve Horne told him on the in-car radio that Michael had dropped out after 59 laps.
“It was a relief,” Rahal said.
60 Years Ago— 1966
News: Newly crowned USAC sprint car champion Roger McCluskey had his Saturday night victory dimmed by a tragic crash which claimed the lives of two drivers, veteran Don Branson, 46, or Champaign, Ill., and newcomer Dick Atkins, 28, of Hayward.
The pair met death in a two-car crash on the first turn of the half-mile dirt track, during the running of the 30-lap feature.
Branson a former National Sprint Car Champion crashed head on into the first tum crash wall on the fifth lap of the feature.
His car landed upside down after flipping back on the track. Atkins, riding directly behind him, hit his car, flipping it back on its wheels. Atkins’ car then went some 150 feet further down the track before slamming into the south tum crash wall where it burst into names.
Branson died on the way to the Gardena Hospital of head and chest injuries, while Atkins, winner of the USAC 10 miler at Sacramento just three weeks ago, died Sunday morning of head injuries and burns.
Winners: Four-time national champion A.J. Foyt ended a long losing streak at the new Altamont Speedway and won the 30-la p USAC sprint car feature, leading all the way.
It was Foyt’s first victory since April when he scored in a midget car race at Ascot Park in Gardena.
Foyt capped his frustrating year by tooling the finely prepared Meskowski Chevy past polesitter Don Thomas to lead the first and every lap, winning by a quarter lap over Bobby Unser in the Key Chevy. Foyt gained a front row starting spot by virtue of his second-place finish in the first heat behind Thomas and there was no question as to who was going to be the top man on this beautiful half-mile paved oval.
Foyt had a big day setting fast time at 19.66 seconds, an automatic track record, and he was quick to adapt himself to a track he had never seen before.
