Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Schmidt still fuming over Sharp incident

Friday, Dec. 10, 1999 | 9:32 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand's motor sports notebook appears Friday. Reach him at bh@vegas.com or 259-4089.

Sam Schmidt has had ample time over the past eight weeks to review the tape of the accident at Texas Motor Speedway that left him with multiple injuries to both feet.

And Schmidt's opinion of the accident, caused when Scott Sharp tried to pass the Henderson resident and another car on the infield grass, hasn't changed one bit.

"I knew what happened the second it happened and Scott readily admits to the mistake," Schmidt said this week after having the pins removed from his left foot.

"He came to the hospital the week after the operation and I think I made him feel pretty bad, but I don't care; I've been dealing with changing bandages for the last seven weeks and had to put a lot of my winter activities on hold because of it."

Schmidt underwent three operations, including two to amputate portions of two of his toes on his right foot, and spent seven weeks in a wheelchair before weaning himself to crutches this week.

Schmidt's less-than-forgiving nature stems from the fact that he said Sharp made an equally poor racing decision in the Vegas.com 500 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway three weeks earlier that resulted in an accident that knocked Las Vegas resident Davey Hamilton out of the race.

"I forgive (Sharp) as a person and I don't have any problems racing with him or racing around him ... he just really needs to think about the situation and not just pass it off as, 'I made a stupid mistake,' " Schmidt said. "He really made a stupid mistake at Vegas, with Hamilton, and that should have been enough of a lesson and now he did two in a row that were really stupid decisions in a car going 200 miles an hour.

"It's like the old saying: Do it once, shame on you, do it twice, shame on me. I'm not going to put up with it again and I don't think anybody else would (either). He can't continue the bad decisions at 200 miles an hour because somebody's going to get hurt worse.

"It's bad enough crashing by yourself or making a mistake that is just hard racing, but to make a decision 'I'm going to drive on the grass to try and pass somebody' is absolutely unconscionable. I think he knows that and I think he's had a little while to think about it so I don't think there will be any problems next year."

Schmidt said he is well down the road to recovery. In fact, he said he's ahead of schedule and plans to climb back into his car in January for an IRL test in Orlando, Fla.

While Treadway Racing announced Tuesday that it signed Robby McGehee to drive the No. 5 Energizer G-Force/Aurora next season, Schmidt remains confident he will drive a second car for Treadway in 2000.

"I'm still trying to put some sponsorship dollars together to run next season," Schmidt said. "Fortunately, we've got a very supportive group of associate sponsors, but we don't have a primary sponsor right now. We have a couple deals on the table that look good, but nobody has said 'yes' yet.

"We're still scraping for the kind of money it takes to do things right. I have been relatively assured that we'll be in Orlando, but we may have to be there in a '99 car instead of a 2000 car if we don't get the money we want."

Schmidt said he harbors no ill feelings towards Treadway for signing McGehee.

"The team signed a deal with Robbie because he brought Energizer with him and we've got a lot of fixed expenses and we need to go down the road with that deal," he said.

"I'm still confident in that I'm set for Treadway. The worst-case scenario is we might be running Orlando and Phoenix with an old car, as far as my program. We didn't have a mechanical DNF all of last year so I'm just as happy running the '99 car in Orlando. But by Vegas, I'm going to want a new car and we're going to be shooting for the funding to do that."

* NASCAR: Roush Racing will make it official today that Las Vegan Kurt Busch has been signed to drive the No. 99 Exide Batteries entry in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2000.

Busch, 21, was picked by team owner Jack Roush from among five finalists to replace Mike Bliss in the No. 99 truck. Bliss left the truck series to drive in the Winston Cup Series for new team owner A.J. Foyt.

Busch, the 1999 NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Series champion, will be moving to Livonia, Mich., to be closer to the race shop. The announcement will be made before tonight's NCTS awards banquet in San Francisco. ...

Winston Cup driver Sterling Marlin is keeping his team sponsor -- Coors Brewing Company -- happy this week during the National Finals Rodeo. The two-time Daytona 500 winner, who drives for Felix Sabates, broke away from off-season testing to spend a few days in Las Vegas during the NFR.

Marlin spent most of the day Thursday with other race team members at LVMS, giving team sponsors hot-lap rides around the 1.5-mile oval.

* CART: Diane Holl has joined Della Penna Motorsports and will engineer Henderson resident Richie Hearn's Reynard/Toyota Champ Car for the 2000 FedEx Championship Series.

Holl has established herself among the ranks of CART's most recognizable engineers over the last five years working for Forsythe Championship Racing, Tasman Motorsports and Reynard Racing Cars.

The Briton most recently worked for Forsythe Championship Racing Team (formerly Tasman Motorsports) where she campaigned drivers Adrian Fernandez and Tony Kanaan to their first Champ Car victories. Before that, Holl served as lead research and development engineer for Reynard Racing Cars in 1994 and 1995.

* IRL: Sarah Fisher is trying to get out of the three-year deal she signed to drive for Team Pelfrey so she can run the full IRL season with Derrick Walker.

Walker, who also owns a CART team, has signed Japanese driver Shinji Nakano to replace Naoki Hattori in the FedEx Championship Series. ...

A.J. Foyt this week officially announced that Jeff Ward will be the driver of the No. 14 Harrah's A.J. Foyt Racing Dallara/Aurora next season. ...

Larry Curry, Tony Stewart, Andy Card and Rick Ehrgott of Tri Star Motorsports have signed Jeret Schroeder to drive one of their Dallara/Auroras next season.

Schroeder, 30, competed in the 1999 Indy 500 in a G-Force/Infiniti fielded by Cobb Racing. He qualified 21st and was running eighth in the race with just 25 laps remaining when the car's engine blew, but he still finished 15th.

* BACKMARKERS: The San Diego Grand Prix, scheduled to be the American Le Mans Series season opener on Feb. 27, 2000, has been canceled.

The original San Diego Grand Prix date was scheduled for Nov. 7, 1999, and was postponed to February in order to give organizers additional time to prepare. Las Vegas Motor Speedway hosted the ALMS season finale this season instead of San Diego. ...

SCORE International will hold its annual awards banquet Saturday night at the Primm Valley Resort. The festivities will feature nearly 500 racers, crews, sponsors, manufacturers, media and fans honoring 23 class champions from the six-race 1999 Laughlin SCORE Desert Series.

Class winners from Southern Nevada to be honored are Ed and Tim Herbst (Trophy-Truck), Troy Herbst (Class 1), Brian Collins (Class 8) and Danny Anderson (Class 10).

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