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