CAN AM STRUGGLING IN REVIVAL

Abstract

In a weekend program that includes a six-hour endurance race that counts in the world manufacturers championship, the Can Am retains the feature spot on the schedule. That is probably a carryover from the days in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when the Can Am rivaled Grand Prix racing in importance. The cars then represented the technological frontier of auto racing.

Patrick Tambay, the Frenchman who won the championship in 1977, has returned from two years with the McLaren Formula One team to drive one of the new Lola T530's for the marque's United States importer, Carl Haas. Tambay picked up where he left off two years ago, winning the first three races of the season.

''We don't have much money,'' [Brad Frisselle] said, ''so we've had to use our ingenuity. Instead of a wind tunnel we made little paper models and tested them with the exhaust from a vacuum cleaner.''

The fourth round of the Citicorp Can Am, the series that is struggling to regain its position as North America's pre-eminent form of road racing, will be staged next Saturday at Watkins Glen.

In a weekend program that includes a six-hour endurance race that counts in the world manufacturers championship, the Can Am retains the feature spot on the schedule. That is probably a carryover from the days in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when the Can Am rivaled Grand Prix racing in importance. The cars then represented the technological frontier of auto racing.

In a gesture toward their production lineage, the Can-Am cars were required to have a passenger seat and fenders. There were no other rules; a car constructor was limited only by the scope of his imagination and the thickness of his wallet.

Engines got larger and more powerful, tires got wider and stickier, and the cars grew wings. Spectators flocked to see the behemoths, piloted by the top American and European drivers, thunder around the North American road circuits.

The Can Am reached its zenith in 1973, when the late Mark Donohue won the championship in a turbo-charged 1100-horsepower Porsche 917-30. The Porsche was not only the most powerful and fastest racing car ever built but also the most expensive. The cost of fielding a car capable of competing with the Porsche would have been astronomical. And, just in case someone did, Porsche was ready to counter with a 2,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder turbo engine.

The club drafted new rules that restricted turbocharged cars, and Porsche promptly withdrew from the series. The Can Am went out of existence at the end of 1974 and was begun again in 1977.

Lola, the English manufacturer whose race cars have dominated the series since its renewal, came up with a completely new model over the winter. Lateral ground-effects pods suck the car down to the track, allowing it to take the turns faster than its predecessor.

Patrick Tambay, the Frenchman who won the championship in 1977, has returned from two years with the McLaren Formula One team to drive one of the new Lola T530's for the marque's United States importer, Carl Haas. Tambay picked up where he left off two years ago, winning the first three races of the season.

This time Tambay has had a lot of competition. Some has come from teams that bought customer versions of the new T530 and made their own modifications.

Most teams spend thousands of dollars renting wind tunnels to develop their ground-effects bodywork, but Brad Frisselle showed that was not necessary.

''We don't have much money,'' Frisselle said, ''so we've had to use our ingenuity. Instead of a wind tunnel we made little paper models and tested them with the exhaust from a vacuum cleaner.''

But the same financial problems that forced the team to substitute a vacuum cleaner for a wind tunnel have prevented it from participating in any more races.