Young Drivers Rule Top Racing Series

Youth is definitely being served this season in America’s top two racing series.

In nine events - six in NASCAR’s Winston Cup series, three on the Indy-car circuit - six have been won by drivers aged 26 or under.

Jeff Gordon, 23, has won three of the six Winston Cup races. Jacques Villeneuve, 23, of Canada, won the Indy-car opener at Miami, 26-yearold Paul Tracy of Canada won last month in Australia, and Robby Gordon, 26, and no relation to Jeff, took his first Indy-car win last Sunday at Phoenix.

“It’s great for the whole sport that these young guys are competitive and winning races,” said Emerson Fittipaldi of Brazil, at 48 the oldest driver on the Indy-car circuit.

“I like to think there are three levels of drivers in our series. There’s the veterans, like me, and what I like to call the middle group, like Michael (Andretti) and Al (Unser Jr.). Then there are these young guys. But I would like to think that experience is still important at the end of the day.”

Winning ways

Three of Terry Labonte’s 14 Winston Cup victories have come on the .625-mile oval at North Wilkesboro, N.C.

In fact, the 1984 series champion has 21 top-10 finishes and has finished lower than 15th only five times in 32 career starts on the track.

Labonte, who goes into Sunday’s race as the defending champion, is fifth in the Winston Cup standings, only six points out of third.

“North Wilkesboro has always been one of my favorite tracks and a track at which I have almost always felt I had a chance to win, no matter what the situation was with my team when we went there for a race.

“When I won races back-to-back there (in 1987 and 1988), I was with Junior Johnson, who has always had great cars there. But I had good runs with Billy Hagan’s teams over the years there, and the cars we took there last season from Hendrick Motorsports were the best I’ve ever had there.”

Labonte also finished second to Geoff Bodine in the North Wilkesboro race in October.

The win a year ago at North Wilkesboro Speedway broke a string of 133 races and 4 1/2 years without a victory.

“Getting back to victory lane last year at North Wilkesboro after not winning for a few years is something I’ll remember for a long time,” Labonte said. “But, in a strange way, it wasn’t all that significant because I knew our team was coming together quickly and was going to be so strong that I felt we’d win again soon.”

Labonte won two more events in 1994 and already has one win - at Richmond - this season.

Big value

In motorsports telecasts monitored by the Sponsors Report in 1994, it appears the two races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - the Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard 400 - outshone the rest by a wide margin.

The Sponsors Report measures the amount of exposure generated for car, race and series sponsors by the amount of TV time each accrue. Together, the two Indy broadcasts accounted for more than $156 million of comparable value, according the quarterly newsletter put out by the Sponsors Report.

The newsletter said six networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN, TNN and TBS had at least one telecast in 1994 that fell within the top 30 motorsports event broadcasts, while 28 telecasts had more than $10 million of exposure value for appearing sponsors.

The highest-ranking motorsports event telecast other than an IndyCar or Winston Cup race was TNN’s broadcast of the July Busch Grand National race at Hickory, N.C., which finished 40th.

Also making an appearance among the top-50 motorsports event telecasts monitored by the Sponsors Report was NBC’s coverage of the National Hot Rod Association’s Oldsmobile Springnationals.

Rock & roll

No matter how Al Hofmann does this weekend in the Winston Select Invitational at Rockingham Dragway, the North Carolina quartermile strip will always hold a warm place in his heart.

The event does not count toward the Winston point championship, but, for Hofmann, winning at Rockingham is just as important as anywhere else on the NHRA’s 20-event national tour.

The 47-year-old Hofmann was mainly an East Coast match racer after becoming a professional funny car driver in 1978. He had competed sporadically and with limited success on the NHRA’s national tour since 1987. But, in the 1991 invitational at The Rock, Hofmann beat John Force for his first major triumph and went on to two NHRA national event wins that year.

Since then, he has earned five more national event wins, a second Winston Select Invitational title (in 1993) and notched four top-seven finishes in the season-point championships.

“That win in 1991 was the catalyst for everything we have now,” Hofmann said. “The success we had after that attracted Western Auto and Slick 50 as major sponsors and, with their support, we now are a serious threat to win the championship.”

Miles milestone

Bobby Rahal, a three-time PPG IndyCar World Series champion and tied for second in the 1995 series points, will reach a milestone Sunday when he takes part in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

It will be the 200th Indy-car start for the driver, 42, who leads all active drivers on that category.