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USRRC Prepares Homestead for Road Racing Extravaganza

14 May 1998

Homestead, FL-The second round of five scheduled rounds gets underway
this week-end for the USRRC (United States Road Racing Championship)
at this South Florida motorsports complex. The return of sportscar
racing, after a six year absence, to this area is a welcomed addition
to the sports schedule.  This race will mark the first time that
sportscars of current technology have raced at Homestead. Vintage
sportscars have been racing at the Homestead facility for two years.

The Miami-Homestead Motorsports Complex has been in use for three
years.  Built by Miami native Ralph Sanchez the facility is recognized
as one of the state-of-the-art arenas for competitors and
spectators. The infield layout with FIA curbing has been given rave
reviews by all of the competitors. Later this year, Homestead will
host the first of two United States races for the FIA-GT
championship. This race will also be watched to determine the strength
of the USRRC. In the past few weeks rumors have been rampant that a
reconciliation between the USRRC and PSR (Professional SportsCar
Racing) would be at hand. Perhaps an announcement will come this
week-end but holding one's breath would not be recommended.  The other
major announcement that has already been made is that the USRRC will
be the managing agent conducting the race in October for the
FIA. Interestingly, Don Panoz who has been the unofficial financial
driving force behind the resurrection of PSR will be hosting the
"Petit Le Mans" race in October as well. North American sportscar
racing fans will have three chances to observe the best of European
racing.

The entry list for the Homestead race is a stronger field than the
most recent race at Las Vegas but not by much except for the CA/WSC
class. USRRC calls their premier class of cars Can- Am(CA) while the
PSR body uses WSC (World Sports Car). Twelve cars are listed in the CA
class. At Las Vegas five WSC/CA cars took the green flag. The CA class
will be led by Gianpiero Moretti and his Momo-sponsored Ferrari
333SP. Coming off of victories at Daytona and Sebring, Moretti will be
attempting to make it a clean sweep of Florida races. Leading the
charge to de-rail the Momo team will be the two Riley & Scott
Ford-powered cars entered by Rob Dyson. In GT1 the battle will be a
continuation of the Sebring encounter between the Champion Porsche GT1
driven by Thierry Boutsen and Bob Wollek and the Visteon Panoz GTR
driven by Doc Bundy and Andy Wallace. At Sebring the Champion Porsche
GT1 would probably have won the race over-all if not for a five-minute
penalty assessed due to a re-fueling violation.

In GT2 only two cars will make the trip to Homestead. The class will
have one Porsche and one Mazda RX-7. GT3 has 11 cars entered for this
week-end. Leading the way is the BMW M3 of Bill Auberlen and Marc
Duez. The total number of entries is 28 cars which exceed the total
number of entries at Las Vegas by six. At Las Vegas the entry list was
dominated by the GT2 and GT3 classes. That was due in part to the
posted prize monies that PSR made available for the Las Vegas race.

The Road Racing Extravaganza at Homestead should be an interesting
race but questions still linger, like buzzards sitting on fence, about
the direction and future of North American SportsCar Racing. Maybe
after the week-end some of those questions will be answered.


David Treffer -- The Auto Channel