Friday, May 2, 2003 | 10:29 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
Back in the 1970s, they used to say that Jody Scheckter, the 1979 Formula One World Champion, was the only driver in the world who could rescue a car from the brink of disaster in one corner -- and put in right back on the brink of another disaster in the next corner.
His son, Tomas, is nothing like that.
Because in his rookie season in the Indy Racing League, Tomas Scheckter proved he also was capable of courting disaster on the straightaway leading into the next corner.
Scheckter, 22, is the IRL's Mr. Excitement. In that he crashed in six of 12 races he started last year and two of three this year, he makes the original Mr. Excitement, NASCAR's Jimmy Spencer, look like a driver's ed instructor.
Is Scheckter reckless? Like an Alabama football coach with a university credit card and a handful of dollar bills. But he's also fast. Darn fast.
Rookies aren't supposed to run up front at the Indianapolis 500, but last year Scheckter led 84 laps, more than anybody named Andretti, Unser or for that matter, Castroneves, as in Helio Castroneves, who will be bidding for an unprecedented third consecutive victory in the world's most famous auto race May 25.
But when the gentlemen start their engines for practice on Sunday, you can bet one of the guys they'll be trying to keep in their mirrors is Scheckter, who has joined forces with car owner Chip Ganassi.
Last year, Scheckter drove for Eddie Cheever, who has struggled to keep his team afloat. Ganassi, on the other hand, has pockets that are deeper than the Monongahela River.
In the late 1990s, Ganassi's drivers won four consecutive championships in the rival Championship Auto Racing Teams series. Then he set out to conquer Indy and won it in his first year back, with Juan Montoya as driver.
Put it this way: Ganassi doesn't come to Indianapolis to finish second. He races to win.
"That's what I go there for as well," Scheckter said recently during a break in testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
"Last year, I led 85 laps, and we almost had it. So it would be great to follow through with a win."
The engaging Scheckter, whose lilting South African accent belies his brash driving style, was pulling away with fewer than 30 laps to go when he had a momentary lapse of concentration. Indy usually doesn't let you get away with those, and instead of victory lane, Scheckter's next stop was the infield care center, for the mandatory check-up.
"You can't let things like that bother you," he said of stuffing fame and fortune in the Turn 4 wall.
Scheckter, whose only victory last year came at Michigan, the IRL's fastest track, said he didn't need to visit the Speedway museum to discover the magnitude of Indianapolis. A month in Gasoline Alley was all it took.
"There's so much press, so many people (in the grandstands)," he said. "It's tough, doing it for a month, and it's really tough on the crew, because they are flat-out working the whole time.
"But I suppose that's why the Indy 500 is the Indy 500."
Yet, the 500 is not for everybody. Richard Petty never drove in it. Neither has Michael Schumacher, the reigning Formula One champion considered the world's best driver. His NASCAR counterpart, Jeff Gordon, has never raced an Indy-car at the track which spawned its name, although he most likely could and would, if his sponsors (and his ex-wife's lawyers) would allow it.
Jody Scheckter, like Schumacher, could have parlayed his World Championship with Ferrari into the ride of his choice at Indy. Yet he had no desire to tempt the racing gods that lurk behind Indy's concrete walls.
"Too dangerous," Tomas Scheckter said about his father's views of racing on ovals.
"Racing on ovals is wild ... but you can only hit the wall so many times, then something's going to break in your body. That's just the way it is."
Scheckter said like many of the drivers with whom he races, his dad gives him a wide berth when it comes to his racing. For a while, Jody was Tomas' manager, but now he's just his biggest fan, which is the way Tomas prefers it.
"He used to be my management, but it got to where I started losing my father," he said. "Now it's great. I speak to him about a lot of stuff."
Last year's race wasn't included. Scheckter said his dad wasn't critical of Tomas crashing within sight of the checkered flag and said very little, other than he thought Tomas, as they say in Formula One, "did a good race."
Maybe that's because aggressive race car drivers, like people in glass houses or those who shout anti-American slogans in front of tanks, shouldn't throw stones.
Tomas Scheckter wasn't yet born when Jody announced his retirement at the young age of 30 in 1980. But he had heard those things about his father's bold style. And now, thanks to archived footage of Formula One racing in the 1970s that airs on the Speed channel, he has had the pleasure of watching his dad throw his car around the racetrack, as if it were a bumper car at the carnival.
"I told him, 'See, dad, you also made mistakes.' "
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