Thursday, May 21, 1998 | 7:58 a.m.
By MIKE HARRIS
AP Motorsports Writer
Richie Hearn was racing before he was born.
Like a lot of youngsters who are drawn to the sport, his dad was a racer. But so was his mom.
"My parents both used to race amateur Sports Car Club of America events on the West Coast," Hearn said. "They belonged to the Corvette Club and they both had two of them.
"My mom actually raced pregnant until .... three or four months, until really she started to show and the seatbelt wouldn't take it any more. She quit after that, but then, after I was born, they raced for about three or four more years."
Racing people have been predicting stardom for Hearn himself since he came out of go-carts as a seven-time national champion.
In successive years he won rookie-of-the-year honors in two different professional series and followed with a Toyota-Atlantic championship in 1995.
The 27-year-old racer from Glendale, Calif., spent a year honing his skills in the Indy Racing League, where he won a pole at New Hampshire, won a race at Las Vegas, finished third in the Indianapolis 500 and was fourth in series points.
In 1997, he and team owner John Della Penna moved full-time to the CART FedEx Championship Series and - well, things weren't quite what either had hoped.
In 17 starts, his best finish was ninth on the road course at Elkhart Lake, Wis. It was a frustrating situation because Hearn was still the same talented driver, but the equipment - an unpredictable Lola chassis - was suspect.
This year, the team bought Swift chassis and began to improve.
Hearn finished 13th in the season-opener at Homestead. An engine problem in Japan and a broken transmission in Long Beach relegated Hearn to 27th and 23rd.
Then, on the short oval at Long Beach, Hearn raised the spirits of everybody on the team with a 10th-place finish. Two weeks ago, he followed that up on the one-mile oval in Rio with a career-best seventh, a showing made even more impressive by the fact he had to start from the rear of the 28-car field because of a spin in qualifying and then was penalized early in the race for pit violation.
"I think that will really help us out," Hearn said of his performance in Brazil. "I saw the guys (from his team) at the airport and they are really pumped up. It really changed their whole morale and we can move forward from here.
"We know we have a good team and a good car and a good (racing) package. It was just a matter of having them all come together. It seems like the last two races we have gotten better and better. Really, we should have finished fourth or fifth at Rio."
Della Penna is as enthusiastic about the recent success as his driver.
"There never has been a question in my mind that Richie is a great driver," the owner said. "The big question has just been when this team would give him the equipment to get the best out of him. I hope this is the turning point. I think we're all ready for it."
The next step will come Saturday on the 1 1/4 -mile oval at Gateway International Speedway in Madison, Ill., where Hearn will race in the Motorola 300.
Gateway, which is just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, is a tough track made tougher this year by a rule change that affects aerodynamics in an effort to slow the cars down.
"Last year, we were really going around there too fast," Hearn added. "When you start getting up to those speeds that we were running last year, it is too tough to pass because the track just seems to get really narrow.
"Now we're going to be quite a bit slower in Turns 3 and 4 and, yeah, we will be braking and downshifting in 1 and 2."
The Gateway race is the day before the Indy 500, which has not had any CART participation since 1995. But that doesn't keep the drivers from wishing they could race at Indianapolis.
"The race in Indianapolis is special for any driver," Hearn said. "I feel fortunate enough to have competed in it and finished third.
"But I don't feel any regret changing from the IRL to CART because this is where I want to be. I am sure I feel just as much regret as any driver about the split. But I'm 100 percent where I am and competing against the people that I am."
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