Thursday, April 2, 1998 | 10:56 a.m.
Some fans are taking extraordinary steps to avoid getting caught in traffic at Texas Motor Speedway's Winston Cup race this weekend.
With close to 200,000 people showing up last year at the inaugural race, it took some spectators as long as four hours to get into and out of the track.
So this year, recreational vehicles of all sizes and shapes rolled onto the grounds of the Fort Worth track as early as last Sunday morning, a full week before the second Texas 500.
Track officials said at least 75 motor homes were in place outside of turn three Monday morning, and they kept coming throughout the week.
Among those finding a good camping spot early was Lee Kelsoe, who lives in Grapevine, just a few miles down State Highway 114 from the track. He dropped his motor home off Monday night.
"I came early to beat the traffic," Kelsoe said. "We went camping and then stopped here to get our spot before everybody shows up."
Dennis Clark, from Rockwell, Texas, arrived Sunday afternoon.
"There were already 30, 40, maybe 45 folks already here when I got here," Clark said. "You know, I've heard a lot of talk about the traffic and things like that, and I've been to lots of other speedways, and I have no complaints. Compared to other places where NASCAR goes, this place is great."
The track has made major improvements in its parking and camping areas during the past year.
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WIN IN SIGHT: With a solid runner-up finish last Saturday in Japan, Al Unser Jr. now heads to Long Beach, Calif., where he has six victories and 11 top-four finishes in 14 starts.
Last year, Unser rallied from 15th at the start and wound up fourth in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, a race run on a temporary street circuit near the downtown area of the harbor city.
On Sunday, the second-generation CART FedEx Series star hopes to break his 36-race winless string, thanks to a radically new Penske-Mercedes car that has been impressive in the first two races of this season.
"We kind of struggled on the road courses last year, but our tests this year have been superb," Unser said. "The feel that this car has is tremendous. So far, everywhere we've gone, we've gone quicker than we have before."
In Japan, Unser led a race for the first time since August 1996, in Elkhart Lake, Wis.
"It was a weird feeling, but it was good to get back up front again," he said. "We'd like to get there again and stay longer."
The next victory by Marlboro Team Penske, with Unser and newcomer Andre Ribeiro as its drivers, will the 100th of team owner Roger Penske's Champ car career.
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STAY IN LINE: Three-time Winston Cup champion Darrell Waltrip has seen a lot of changes in stock car racing, and not all of them have made him happy.
"The thing I don't like about racing today ... there's so much follow the leader," Waltrip said. "You run right on the bottom of the race track. You've got to put the left (front) wheel on the yellow line all the time.
"If you slip up, maybe somebody will pass you, but most of the time it's follow the leader, single file, round and round we go. The only way you can pass somebody is give them a little nerf and slip them up out of the groove, or somebody gets impatient and wrecks a whole lot of guys in front of you and you go through the mess."
Waltrip says that racing in the '70s and '80s, thanks to the bias-ply tires used then, saw a lot of slipping and sliding.
"It was like racing on dirt sometimes," he explained. "You had to anticipate and you had to set a guy up. ... You had a lot of guys back there racing each other. I just think it was a whole lot more exciting then than it is now.
"I think it was when men were men and cars were cars. We didn't have all this technology we've got today, with bodies and spoilers and radial tries and trick shock absorbers and all those things that are going into our sport today."
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TRACK RESPECT: It might have seemed easy to Jeff Ward last May when he finished third in his first Indianapolis 500. But the former motorcycle racing champion, now a regular in the Indy Racing League, wasn't fooled by the showing that earned him Indy rookie of the year honors at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
"I don't think you ever slack on the speedway," said Ward, who led as late as lap 192 of the 200-lap race. "I think you have to give it respect every time you go out. You've got to have 100 percent concentration the whole time.
"You've really got to listen to the car and listen to your butt on how the car is reacting. If there's something you feel, come on in and check it out. Don't stay out there and say, 'I'm going to try the next turn and see how it feels like again' or tough it out, because it will bite you."
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