Sports Car Club Of America

Race car driver Scott Liebler died Sunday night of injuries he received in a crash during Saturday's Sports Car Club of America race at Road Atlanta. Liebler, 29, of Manhattan, Kan., slammed into the rear of Jim Brouk's car during the first lap of the National Championship Valvoline Runoffs. After the crash, Liebler's Martini MK 53 car became airborne, rolling several times and coming to rest upright about 100 yards away.

Donna Mae Mims, 82, the first woman to win a Sports Car Club of America national championship and a participant in the original "Cannonball Run" that became the subject of a 1981 movie starring Burt Reynolds, died Oct. 6 from complications after a stroke, said officials at a funeral home in McMurray, Pa. Mims was known as "the Pink Lady" for driving mostly in pink cars and often wearing pink. Mims said in a 1964 Times article that she started racing after working on a friend's pit crew in Pittsburgh and asking to take a practice lap. "That did it, I was hooked," she said.

Super-Vee racer Mike Groff dropped to third in the Sports Car Club of America's national point standings after a sixth-place finish in Sunday's Detroit Grand Prix. Groff, of Northridge, was second in points going into the race, but was passed by Davey Jones, who came in second in the Detroit street race. Groff is only four points behind the leader, Ken Johnson, going into the Meadowlands Grand Prix this Sunday in East Rutherford, N. J. The Detroit race was Groff's fourth of the 12-race season.

Nelson Piquet of Brazil fought off a determined effort Sunday from Britain's Nigel Mansell to win the Australian Grand Prix and claim his second consecutive Formula One victory. At 38 the oldest man on the track, Piquet drove a mistake-free race in his Bennetton, completing 81 laps on the 2.348-mile street course just outside Adelaide's downtown area in 1 hour 49 minutes 44.570 seconds. Mansell overcame a spinout to finish second.

Finland's Robert Lappalainen, driving a Jack Roush-prepared Ford Mustang, won a caution-flag slowed Sports Car Club of America Trans-Am race Saturday on a street course in downtown Phoenix. Roush Mustangs also finished third, driven by Max Jones of Long Beach, and fourth, with Lyn St. James of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Second was former Indy car driver Chris Knifel of Lake Forrest, Ill., in a Chevrolet Beretta. It was Lappalainen's first victory in 19 Trans-Am starts. He took the lead from St.

Promising rookie sports car racer Paul Mumford was one of two men killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed and burned this week, a close friend said Thursday. Mumford, 31, of Yorba Linda, was with Chris Premer, 31, of Costa Mesa, said fellow racer Brian Provost. Provost said the two men were good friends. Mumford, a former motorcycle racer, won his first Sports Car Club of America Pro Racing event at the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on Sept. 7.

One of two men critically injured during a car club race in Irvine over the weekend died Monday, authorities said. John Hartley Clark, 52, of Rolling Hills Estates was pronounced dead at 12:15 a.m. after undergoing surgery at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center here, spokeswoman Nancy Gasho said. Clark's passenger, Eric Karl Lindquist, 37, of Riverside, suffered head injuries and remained in critical condition at the hospital.

Cameron Argetsinger, 87, a lawyer who started the road-racing tradition at Watkins Glen in western New York 60 years ago and helped lure Formula 1 to race at the track for two decades, died Tuesday at his Seneca Lake home in Burdett, N.Y. Inspired by his love of fast automobiles and the natural beauty of the Finger Lakes where his family spent summer vacations, Argetsinger, an early member of the Sports Car Club of America, proposed an amateur road...