CARS Up to Speed

DALLAS TAKES GREAT PRIDE IN ITS sports personalities, as well it should. Roger. Tom. Ro. But what about Raymond? Buddy? Stuart or Al? Excuse me? None have thrown a pass or swished a jumper. Yet this short list includes a six-time world champion, the executive director of a sporting event that last year drew 105,000 spectators in three days, and two potential stars who are frequently covered in national magazines but get little to no local press.

We’re talking motor sports. Here. No, Dallas is not Day-tona, Indianapolis, or Monte Carlo, but there is talent, know-how, and a grand prix right here in Big D. Dan Sher-rod, former chief of the Texas Region of the Sports Car Club of America, estimates the number of active Dallas-area drivers at thirty-five to forty. Racer Craig Taylor says that if a track were built in Dallas, there would be a couple of hundred cars in the area within two years. We have an active community of race car drivers in Dallas, they say, and hardly anyone seems to know about it.

“If I walk into a restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina, or Atlanta, everyone knows who I am,” says Raymond Beadle. “But in Dallas. ..” And who is Raymond Beadle? A clue: he has driven a car 279 miles per hour. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, Beadle won six world championships, dominating the funny car class of drag racing much in the way the Celtics and Lakers dominated the NBA.

Retired from driving, Beadle still owns the Blue Max Racing learn, which has risen to the top of NASCAR racing (stock cars, the Day-tona 500, etc.). Blue Max’s primary driver in 1989 was Rusty Wallace, who claimed the Winston Cup last year as the most productive driver on the NASCAR circuit. He also won more than $1.6 million in prize money. Beadle heads the operation from his sprawling offices on North Dallas Parkway, yet remains relatively unknown in Dallas.

Not all Dallas-based drivers have name recognition problems. The Crow family name is familiar to most DaJ-lasites, but Stuart Crow would rather be known for his racing achievements than as the son of mega-developer Trammell Crow. A professional racer since 1986, Crow was voted the Most Improved Racing Driver in the Super Vee class in 1989 (Super Vee cars resemble those driven at the Indianapolis 500) and is the favorite to win the series championship in 1990. Crow finished in the top ten of all ten races he finished in 1989 and stacked up third in the season-long point standings. He ended the season with a victory at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix.

Al Lamb gives himself better than a fifty-fifty chance of fielding an Indy car in 1990. Lamb, who owns Dallas Honda, took up auto racing in 1982. He figures he has won thirty to thirty-five amateur and professional auto races. He has three goals for 1990: to field a Grand Prix Trans Am car, race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and to spend May in Indianapolis.

It is difficult for local drivers to find sponsorship, Lamb says, because there are no major tracks in the area, and “locally, awareness is very limited.”

The related problems of a lack of racing facilities and low public awareness lead to another frustration for the drivers: little media attention. While some express surprise at the lack of racing coverage in the local press, most realize that they are competing with other major sports, and that until a major track is built here, drivers will have to look outside the area for recognition.

That is why, though Lamb, Crow, Beadle, and others have lived in the Dallas area for years, almost all of their driving has been done elsewhere. Drag racers found an outlet in 1986 when Texas Motorplex opened in En-nis to rave reviews. But for others, it has been Florida, California, Georgia, even Canada.

Buddy Boren is a man driven to changing all that. As executive director of the Grand Prix of Dallas, Boren is a one-man public relations combine for area motor sports. He sounded excited when he called to “touch base” one day in early January. On that day alone, he said, the Grand Prix had sold $50,000 worth of tickets-this a full six months before the first green flag. ]The June 1-3 event will be the third annual and the second consecutive in Addison. Last year, the Grand Prix of Dallas drew about 105,000 fans over three days, putting it in the top three Grand Prix events of 1989. This year, Boren expects 125,000 spectators.

“The Grand Prix has been an exercise in education,” Boren explains. “A lot of people who have been to one don’t have a perception of car racing. But that will change as each year passes. Eventually I’d like the Grand Prix to produce a permanent track. We could run on it year-round.”

Big-time, year-round motor sports in Dallas? Why not, asks Boren. Racing is a major spectator sport nationwide, he says. Thirteen Dallas-area drivers entered in the different Grand Prix categories in 1989, a number Boren thinks will be matched this year.

Stuart Crow, anxious for the season to begin, will be one of them. “Two years ago I wanted to be at Indy in three years,” he says. “Obviously, I’m not going to make that.” Not to worry. Few racers drive at Indianapolis before their mid-thirties. Crow is thirty.

He admits that, early in his career, others probably viewed him as a rich kid looking for something to do. “I couldn’t afford to dwell on that,” he explains.

What Crow does dwell on is his performance, and, ironically, a problem faced by all drivers-financing. Though his family is supportive, being a Crow, he says, “can sometimes get in the way of raising money or getting sponsors. Everyone assumes I don’t need it. In fact, right now, the only thing keeping me from fielding an Indy car is money.” So Crow, like other Super Vee racers, hopes to be asked to drive for established Indy-car teams. Plucked from triple-A to the majors, as it were. It happens-especially when the driver is winning on the circuit.

So, 1990 might be an important year for Crow-and for Dallas motor sports. If the Dallas Grand Prix draws the crowds it expects, Dallas’s racing community may win locally the kind of recognition it already enjoys nationally. That recognition could spark sponsorships and the building of the world-class facility the gentlemen need to start their engines here at home.