Race Car Drivers

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.

The Indianapolis 500 lineup was expanded to 35 drivers Sunday, giving starting spots to all qualifiers regardless of exemptions by the Indy Racing League. The move on the final day of time trials for Sunday's race restored veterans Johnny Unser and Lyn St. James, who did not have guaranteed spots and apparently had been bumped, to the field. Seven others who qualified slower than Unser and St. James had exemptions and already were in the lineup.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is curbing his enthusiasm. While relishing his near victory in last week's Daytona 500, the most popular driver in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series knows he's back at what has been -- for him -- the unfriendly confines of Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. Still, Earnhardt said Friday that he hopes to maintain momentum from his second-place finish behind winner Jamie McMurray in the Daytona 500 with another strong showing Sunday at the Fontana track. "I enjoy finishing up front; it had been a long time since we had finished [well]

Race car driver Dave Rosenblum spoke Thursday to about 400 Oxnard youths about drug abuse, chronicling his own battle and warning of the perils of addiction. "This is not something I'm real proud to admit, but I'm a recovering drug addict," Rosenblum told fourth- through sixth-graders at Oxnard's Driffill elementary school. "I am 46 years old, and I spent the best years of my life--from the age of 17 to 34--screwing up my life. I wasted the best years of my life."

Athl e te: "One who takes part in . . . exercises, sports or games requiring mental agility, endurance or strength." --Webster's Third New International Dictionary Are race drivers athletes? Derek Daly of Ireland and Geoff Brabham, long removed from Australia, have their own ways of answering that old question. They are teammates with Team Nissan. Brabham has already clinched the International Motor Sports Assn.'

Race car driver Rocky Moran, who a few months ago was beaten by teen-agers in his neighborhood, suffered another misfortune when fire spread through his home, authorities said Wednesday. The source of the fire Tuesday night was apparently a propane barbecue attached to the house, which had been used an hour earlier. It spread to the second, third and fourth floors, causing the fourth-floor ceiling to collapse and injure four firefighters.

Jason Priestley, heartthrob of the 1990s TV teen drama "Beverly Hills 90210," was in serious condition Sunday after his car slammed into two retaining walls during a practice lap at a Kentucky auto race. The actor's Indy-style car, traveling at nearly 180 mph, hit an outside wall coming out of the second turn of the final practice lap for the Kentucky 100 at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, then spun and hit an inside wall.

One sees the name Alex Gurney listed among drivers in the Kool-Toyota Atlantic race in Long Beach this weekend, and there arises an image of yet another second-generation driver encouraged by his family to follow in Dad's tire tracks. That's the way the Pettys, Unsers, Andrettis and many others did it. But not the Gurneys. "My parents were 100% against me pursuing a career as a racing driver," the 24-year-old Atlantic rookie says.

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.

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.

As NASCAR drivers take their warm-up lap around the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Feb. 28, a shiny Shelby GT350 will lead the way. The pace car's trip to the racetrack will be remarkably short because it was built -- or, more precisely, modified -- right across the street at Shelby American, where workers convert Ford Mustangs into Shelby GTs and assemble the legendary Cobras from scratch. Former race car driver Carroll Shelby began making sports cars in Los Angeles nearly 50 years ago but relocated to three buildings just off Interstate 15 -- about 20 minutes north of the Strip, on Speedway Boulevard -- in 1998.

Even after winning an unprecedented six consecutive NHRA top-fuel championships, Tony Schumacher still is driving scared -- much to his rivals' chagrin. "I'm afraid to lose right now," he said Friday. "[My title streak is] going to end at some point, I just don't want it to end this year." This year starts this weekend with the 50th Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, the season opener for the National Hot Rod Assn.'s Full Throttle Series. The series' fastest class is top fuel -- dragsters that reach 320 mph -- and Schumacher, 40, is top fuel's preeminent driver and reigning champion.

They had colorful nicknames like "The Mongoose" and "The Snake," initially raced mostly for glory in light of skimpy prize money and became legends as professional drag racing's popularity expanded nationwide. As the National Hot Rod Assn. holds the 50th anniversary of the Winternationals this week, here's a look at some of drag racing's most notable drivers over the decades in the premier top-fuel and funny car classes, some of whom will appear to help celebrate this year's Winternationals in Pomona: 1960s "Big Daddy" Don Garlits In the Winternationals' first 10 years, and for decades after that, Garlits was the driver even casual fans knew as being synonymous with drag racing.

Can Tony Schumacher possibly win a seventh consecutive series title? Will Ashley Force Hood or Antron Brown win their first? And can Larry Dixon bounce back from losing last year's title by the narrowest margin on record? As the new season of the National Hot Rod Assn.'s premier Full Throttle Series gets underway with the 50th running of the Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway Thursday through Sunday in Pomona, here's a preview of the competition in the sport's four leading divisions: Top fuel A key architect behind Schumacher's five consecutive season-long titles from 2004 to 2008 was Alan Johnson, his crew chief.

What goes through a drag racing driver's mind while he or she's rocketing to 300 mph in a mere 1,000 feet? A lot, it turns out. While it looks simple enough -- steer the car straight and step on the gas pedal -- actually driving an NHRA top-fuel dragster or funny car is anything but. In the four seconds or so it takes for the car to launch from a standing start to reach top speed, traversing the length of a football field in a second, its...

The National Hot Rod Assn. lifted the competition license of drag racing champion Darrell Alderman and suspended him indefinitely Friday after learning that he had pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine. Alderman, winner of the past two NHRA pro stock championships, drove a Dodge Daytona to victory in 11 of 14 national events last season, setting a record for victories in a season.

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.

Still carrying the psychic pain of a teammate's death three years ago and the physical pain from his own injuries from a racing crash six months later, John Force now faces another curve that life has thrown at the celebrated drag racer. The leader of John Force Racing arrives at this year's season-opening NHRA Winternationals in Pomona with only three funny cars on his team instead of four, the woeful economy having recently forced him to park one dragster to save money. The remaining three cars are driven by Force, his daughter Ashley Force Hood and his son-in-law Robert Hight.

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.