Independent Racing Leaving With Marcis

Dave Marcis, the last of the old Winston Cup independents, will make next month’s Daytona 500 the final race of his long career.

When Marcis drove in his first 500, in 1968, the field was half filled with independent drivers. Racers such as Elmo Langley, Bill Champion, Buddy Arrington, James Hylton and Wendell Scott, NASCAR’s first and almost only black driver, were in that race. Later, independents such as Richard Childress, J.D. McDuffie, Cecil Gordon and Ed Negre drove for years with little hope of winning.

Alan Kulwicki broke the mold when he won a championship in 1992 as an independent, beating the heavily sponsored Bill Elliott and Davey Allison in the final race.

It was never easy to be an independent, battling against well-financed teams with corporate backing, but until the last few years there were always a few stubborn guys willing to put up with being a back-marker most of the time.

Marcis, 61, is the end of the line.

Only seven-time Winston Cup champion Richard Petty has been in as many Daytona 500s as Marcis, 32 of them, but Marcis is the only one to have raced 32 consecutively, from 1968 to 1999.

In 818 races since he left Wausau, Wis., to drive in NASCAR, he has won only five times, never in the Daytona 500, where his highest finishes were sixth in 1975 and 1978.

He did win a 125-mile qualifying race in 1976.

“I’ll never forget that first time I drove through the tunnel at Daytona,” Marcis said. “I didn’t realize what I was getting into. I looked down to the far right and that was Turn 1 and I looked over to the left and there was Turn 4.

“I thought, ‘I can’t believe this place. I can’t believe you go out there and you hold the car flat-footed.’ It was harder in those days to hold the car flat-footed but it was just awesome when I saw that place.”

To make his 33rd Daytona 500, Marcis will have to qualify his No. 71 Realtree Camouflage Chevrolet either through time trials that begin Feb. 9 or in one of the Gatorade 125-mile qualifying races Feb. 14.

“Making the race, that’s the big deal at Daytona. That would be very big for me. I started my career here and I would certainly love to end it with the 2002 Daytona 500.”

There may be one unusual problem facing the popular Wisconsin veteran. He has always worn wingtip shoes while racing, rather than regular driver’s shoes. This year, NASCAR has mandated that all clothing must be fire resistant.

Maybe Marcis can dip the wingtips in a borax solution, the long-ago method of fireproofing racing clothes.

Personal Watercraft

George Follmer, a Hall of Fame driver, once won the Sports Car Club of America’s Trans-Am championship in a Javelin and the Can-Am crown in Roger Penske’s L&M; Porsche-Audi 917K as a fill-in for the injured Mark Donohue--in the same year, 1972.

From the time Follmer’s nephew, Mike, was born in 1955, he wanted to follow in his uncle’s footsteps as a driver. After trying motorcycles and race cars for a few years, Mike found his niche on water. He became a personal watercraft competitor.

He won his first race on a Yamaha 701 Raider in San Felipe, Mexico, in 1994. The next year he formed his own team, Mike Follmer Watersports, and began campaigning in the International Jet Sports Boating Assn. Twice he received the image-maker-of-the-year award from Baja Promotions, organizers of IJSBA off-shore endurance races.

Last year, as a factory Yamaha rider, Follmer climaxed a championship season by winning the world’s longest personal watercraft race, the six-hour Team Endurance 300, and was crowned national endurance champion with his co-driver, Greg Saugstad.

In the six hours--actually 6 hours 1 minute 8 seconds--Team Follmer made 44 laps of 7.2 miles around Long Beach harbor and traveled 316.8 miles. Follmer and Saugstad took turns driving seven laps each between fuel stops, changing drivers on every stop.

After the first lap, Saugstad had the boat in sixth place, but Follmer assured his crew that, “The only lap we have to lead is the last one. For all the rest, all we have to do is keep everyone leading in sight.”

By the four-hour mark, Team Follmer had the lead and finished more than 10 minutes ahead of the second-place craft.

“After chasing an overall title in BP Motorsports for over nine years and coming very close on many occasions, it is especially nice to capture my first absolute win in this prestigious event and get crowned national team endurance champion too,” Follmer said.

“This is the way to end a dream season and pay back all of my great sponsors.”

Follmer also won the expert open crown in both the Gran Prix and Long Course series. He will receive his championship awards Saturday night at the River Palms Resort Casino in Laughlin, Nev.

Tracy Malan, a Kawasaki rider from Apple Valley, will receive the IJSBA overall points championship. Follmer finished second.

Desert Challenge

Four-time winners Ed and Tim Herbst and Brian Collins, all of Las Vegas, will be going for fifth victories this weekend in the featured SCORE Trophy Truck division at the eighth annual Laughlin Desert Challenge. It is the opening event of the six-race Desert Racing Series..

Collins, whose first three wins were in Class 8, won the truck main event last year. The Herbst brothers won in 1995, ‘97, ’99 and 2000.

Three new high-tech trucks, driven by Damen Jefferies, Darren Skilton and Scott Steinberger, have been added to the elite Trophy Truck race. Skilton will be in a new prototype Kia sport utility vehicle.

Racing will be split over Saturday and Sunday over a 13-mile loop desert course starting and finishing at Laughlin Events Park Stadium.

SCORE officials also announced that a new event, Henderson’s Terrible 250, will be held July 11-14, using portions of the old Mint 400 course, the forerunner of U.S. desert races.

Fast Laps

Happy birthday to NHRA founder Wally Parks. He was 89 Wednesday.... Mike Zizzo, veteran CART vice president for public relations, has left to join NASCAR’s Winston Cup series in a similar capacity.... Former world Grand Prix champion Kevin Schwantz and longtime endurance champion John Ulrich have been elected to the American Motorcylist Assn. board of trustees. The AMA also announced that Andrew Leisner, a former Grand Prix rider, will head a newly created Pro Racing office in Los Angeles.

The Southern California short-track season will kick off Feb. 9 at Perris Auto Speedway where the Sprint Car Racing Assn. will run a day race, for the first time, at the half-mile dirt oval. Irwindale Speedway’s half-mile paved oval will open March 9 with an open house practice for all NASCAR stock cars, race trucks and legend cars. Their first racing program is set for March 16 with a 100-lap feature for NASCAR Weekly Series super late model stock cars. Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino will check in a week later, March 23, with NASCAR late model, stock pony and Junior Racing League cars.

Champion Cory Kruseman and car owner Harlan Willis collected $5,500 each at the SCRA awards banquet where Kruseman was also named the best non-winged sprint car driver in the country by the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame. Other SCRA awards: Troy Rutherford, most improved; Tim Huver, sportsman of the year; Mike Nigh, mechanic of the year; and Michael Hinrichsen, rookie of the year.