Automobile Racing

Daylight is breaking over Saugus Speedway and Tom Pacheco and his 4-year-old son, Alex, pull into the raceway parking lot, a sleek Italian-built kiddie go-kart in tow. The early-morning quiet is soon broken by the roar of engines as other kid drivers and their parents ready their racers. Team Pacheco goes through its pre-race inspections, checking the tire pressure, spark plugs, brakes, accelerator and steering.

Tony Stewart had more than enough fuel to finish this time. A year after running out of gas and faltering in a NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup opener in New Hampshire, Stewart cruised toward victory lane with a 0.9-second margin over Kevin Harvick in Monday's Geico 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. "At the very end we knew the fuel mileage was going to be an issue," said Darian Grubb, Stewart's crew chief. "But Tony is one of the best at saving fuel. We tried to keep him updated ... and make sure we had enough to make it to the end. " As other drivers lost fuel gambles and faded, Stewart crossed the finish line for his first Sprint Cup series win of the season.

Rich Vogler, five-time United States Auto Club midget champion, was killed Saturday night when he crashed during a sprint car race at Salem (Ind.) Speedway. Dr. Dan Anderson pronounced Vogler dead at 11:40 p.m. EDT at the Washington County Memorial Hospital in Salem, according to Bill Marvel, vice president of USAC. The crash occurred about 40 minutes earlier. Tony Floyd, an ambulance medic for the hospital, described the 39-year-old Vogler as having a "severe head injury."

As four of the most experienced drivers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series battled for the win Sunday in the Auto Club 500, right behind them was 19-year-old Joey Logano. And to hear folks in the NASCAR garage tell it, the sport had better get used to seeing the lanky youngster mix it up with the leaders each week during the 36-race Cup schedule. Logano, the stock car racing phenom who took over the prized Cup ride vacated by two-time champion Tony Stewart last year, started 19th and finished fifth in Sunday's race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

About the Project This is the result of six months of research and reporting by Tribune Auto Race Writer Ed Hinton, with help from staffers at other Tribune papers, among them Darin Esper of the Los Angeles Times. It sheds new light on the decline of traditional fatalism among race drivers and the need for more research and action to prevent the violent deaths the sport has come to accept.

Mitch Payton is a former desert motorcycle racing champion who has won three consecutive Sports Car Club of America amateur races in a showroom stock Honda CRX and appears headed for the national championship runoffs in October at Road Atlanta. Payton is a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair. He drives with brake and accelerator hand controls mounted into the steering column and a clutch release on the shifter.

Collene Campbell arrived in court Thursday wearing the St. Christopher medal her brother, slain racing legend Mickey Thompson, wore during his races. It lay over a diamond necklace her mother gave her on her deathbed 11 years ago, asking Campbell not to take it off until her brother's killer was brought to justice. On Thursday, after nearly 19 years, 74-year-old Campbell was released from those mystic bonds.

No one ever called Jim Hurtubise stubborn, simply because that normally adequate word did not begin to describe the extent of his obstinacy. Give up driving, just because a fiery crash had left him with a nose like a falcon's beak, hands like talons and a body so covered with skin grafts that ordinary sweating was impossible? Don't be silly. Switch to a rear-engine car, just because the rest of the racing world had shown it to be superior? Ridiculous.

Ascot Park, the busiest dirt race track in America for 33 years, comes to the finish line Thursday. The 50th annual Turkey Night Grand Prix for United States Auto Club midget cars figures to be the last of more than 5,000 main events held since the track opened at 182nd and Vermont Avenue in 1957.

Those who were there for the CART FedEx championship race at Michigan Speedway in July are almost unanimous in declaring it the most exciting and competitive race in the history of Indy cars--or champ cars as CART cars are now labeled. There were 62 lead changes, more than twice as many as at any previous race. And that only counted changes at the start-finish line. On many laps, three or four drivers took turns in front as the cars shuffled back and forth.

Another year, another poor finish for Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Auto Club Speedway. The most popular driver in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series had hoped to reverse his record at the Fontana track Sunday after his second-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500. But after starting 27th on the 43-car grid for the Auto Club 500 and climbing to 21st early in the race, Earnhardt was penalized for speeding on pit road, dropping him deep into...

NASCAR is back in Fontana, which means Jimmie Johnson will toss and turn at night. "When I go to California, I know the night before I'm not going to sleep well," the reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion said of this weekend's race at Auto Club Speedway. "I haven't for the last eight years." That's because Johnson and his rival drivers view Sunday's Auto Club 500, the second race after last weekend's season-opening Daytona 500, as the first true yardstick of how their cars stack up against each other.

Danica Patrick is as curious as everyone else to see how well she performs in her second NASCAR stock car race Saturday. Patrick made her debut last weekend in NASCAR's second-tier Nationwide Series, but her race ended after a car wreck just past the halfway point on the high-banked Daytona International Speedway. Her next race is the Stater Bros. 300 at the much flatter, two-mile Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. "I don't know what to expect [at Fontana]," Patrick said in an interview, adding that she and her crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., "haven't really talked about it too much" ahead of her first practice here on Friday.

Melanie Troxel made drag racing history in 2008 when she became the first woman to have won races in both of the NHRA's premier classes, funny cars and top fuel. But a year later, Troxel couldn't be found in either class. A victim of the economic woes afflicting the National Hot Rod Assn. and motor sports, Troxel's funny car was parked in 2009 for lack of sponsorship. Now she's back, thanks to a deal with In-N-Out Burger that's enabling Troxel to race in eight funny car races in the NHRA's Full Throttle Series, starting with this weekend's Kragen O'Reilly Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona.

He drove a backup car that hadn't taken any laps of practice. His crew chief mixed up the schedule and showed up uncharacteristically late to the morning drivers meeting. You'd forgive the No. 48 team for being a bit discombobulated going into the Gatorade Duels at Daytona. But they weren't. Not even a little bit. Four-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson won the first 150-mile qualifying race Thursday afternoon by a margin of .005 seconds. Kasey Kahne won the second race, breaking up the Hendrick Motorsports party.

Danica Patrick proved this much Saturday: Her desire to drive stock cars is not a novelty act. Despite a collision with another car that briefly dropped her deep in the field and her unfamiliarity with the famed "drafting" at Daytona International Speedway, Patrick drove an impressive race and stormed back to finish sixth in her first stock car race. "I had so much fun in a race car today," an ebullient Patrick told a media swarm that greeted her in the garage after the race.

In the last six Indianapolis 500s, Chevrolet Indy V-8 engines, designed and built by Ilmor Engineering of Brixworth, England, have powered the winning car. This year, Chevy is gone, having taken its name and its bow-tie insignia from the nameplate of the Ilmor engines. Its one-quarter partnership in Ilmor with Roger Penske and engineers Mario Illien and Paul Morgan went up for sale.

Malcolm Smith thought for a moment, smiling as always, as he pondered the question. He had just arrived home after driving at least 8,500 miles in the Paris-to-Dakar rally, 22 days across the mostly uncharted western part of Africa, zigzagging through the heartland of the Sahara Desert. "Go back? You bet I would," Smith said. "I would like to see improvement in the safety regulations, but I'd go back in a second. I hope to be there again in 1989."

How will she do? It's the overarching question here Saturday when Danica Patrick, who gained fame as a driver of sleek Indy-style cars, makes her debut driving 3,000-pound stock cars. With the full force of her promotional machine behind her, Patrick starts 12th Saturday in a 43-car race in the ARCA Series at the high-banked Daytona International Speedway. ARCA is a minor league series separate from the much larger NASCAR, and Patrick plans to quickly jump to NASCAR's second-tier Nationwide Series either next weekend here or Feb. 20 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

Jeff Gordon knows he's running out of time to win a fifth NASCAR championship. Gordon, the onetime "Boy Wonder" who captured his four titles in NASCAR's premier series between 1995 and 2001, hasn't won another since the series became the Sprint Cup Series and adopted the "Chase for the Cup" title playoff format in 2004. It hasn't been for lack of trying. Gordon finished second in the point standings in 2007 and third last year, but he's had to watch as Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson won an unprecedented four consecutive championships from 2006 through last season.