Rolling Thunder : Harris’ Off-Road Work Speaks Volumes About a Man Driven to Lofty Heights

Glenn Harris drives an unmuffled, unbelievably loud, screeching, screaming, fire-belching vehicle with no turn signals and engine parts hanging out all over, crashing and bashing into other vehicles with concern only for himself, all in a crazed, bug-eyed effort just to get someplace early.

Somewhat like drivers on the Hollywood Freeway on a Saturday night.

Harris is not, however, one of those people you encounter on the freeway who is heavy on emotional problems and light on car insurance. Harris does his screeching and slamming on race tracks. Race tracks made of dirt.

He is a driver and the leader of Mazda’s $1-million entry into off-road racing. Harris’ team consists of two other drivers, three racing trucks and enough spare parts to fill an 18-wheel trailer, which they do. And under his leadership, the team has vaulted to the front of the standings in the Mickey Thompson Off-Road Championship Gran Prix series heading into the sixth event of the season, tonight at the Coliseum.

Off-road racing is not exactly the type of spectator sport that attracts U. S. senators. You would be hard-pressed to find even one Beverly Hills maitre d’ at a race. But if the sights and sounds of lightweight trucks roaring around a dirt track at speeds approaching 70 m.p.h. and lifting off into the air every few seconds doesn’t get your heart beating just a bit faster, then you are--and we hate to inform you of this--dead.

Harris, 30, of Camarillo, has been racing on dirt for 15 years, pounding across everything from flat-course desert races to stadium dirt mounds. Nothing, however, has quite topped his two experiences racing up Pike’s Peak in Colorado, which is 14,110 feet above sea level. And Harris can count one goose bump for each precarious foot.

On July 10, in his second assault on the mountain since 1982, Harris won the initial truck division contest of the Pike’s Peak race. It was a race he admits he was almost afraid to start, and one he nearly didn’t finish.

“You have to get up at 3 a.m. to prepare for the 6 a.m. start, and looking at yourself in the mirror at 3 o’clock knowing what you have to do isn’t a great feeling,” Harris said. “You keep reminding yourself that you’re about to drive straight uphill as fast as you can on a road with no guard rails and off the side of the road is a long, long drop. It’s a scary feeling.

“I was the first truck to start, so I’m blazing the trail over a slushy, snowy road. It was more like skating than driving. And that also means that the spectators, about 30,000 of them, might be standing around in the road.

“I came around a turn about midway through the race, going about 40 miles an hour, and in a half-second I see a girl standing right in the road, right in the tire rut that I have to hit to make the turn. It was a moment I’ll never forget. She froze in her tracks and couldn’t move, and I couldn’t swerve or I’d go over the edge, and a half-second later I was on her. I think I missed her by three inches. Maybe four.”

That wasn’t Harris’ only close call on his way to the clouds. On a turn called the “Ski Area,” he swept to the outside of the turn just a little too much and, at nearly 70 m.p.h., had the right front tire of his truck hanging over the edge of the trail.

“At that spot there’s a sheer drop of 3,000 or 4,000 feet,” Harris said. “I knew it was there from a practice run, and I saw it out of the corner of my eye as I got to it. But I felt the truck slide and I felt the tire go out over the edge. It opened my eyes for a second or two, but really, I knew the other three tires were grabbing OK. I wasn’t really worried.”

Of course not. Worry, just because one of his four wheels was hanging over the edge of the earth at 70 m.p.h.?

No one has ever accused the best off-road racers of being normal.

Harris was given control of the Mazda off-road truck program four years ago, on his 26th birthday. A driver he hired, Jeff Huber of Apple Valley, finished first in the 1987 driver standings in the off-road series. Harris was second. The third driver on the team is Rod Millen of New Zealand, whose brother, Steve, races for rival Toyota.

Toyota has won the series each of the five years of its existence. But after five events in 1988, Harris, Huber and Millen have the Mazda team in front with 518 points. Toyota is second with 470 points.

Between series races, Harris has led his squad into races in Canada and Guam, winning both. The team has won four of the five Mickey Thompson series events this year and has finished first in seven of eight races overall.

“Even though it wasn’t part of the series, Pike’s Peak was the most enjoyable race this year,” Harris said. “It’s so different, and there’s so much tradition to it for off-road racers. It’s a 66-year-old race, second in auto racing in the United States only to the Indy 500. And you not only challenge the mountain, you’re testing yourself against the other people who have raced up the mountain. Guys like the Unser brothers, Parnelli Jones, Mario Andretti, A. J. Foyt, all the great ones. They’ve all challenged that mountain.”

And all of them have done it for the same reason as Harris.

“It’s the rush, the pure adrenaline rush that you can’t get from anything else,” he said. “That’s the real reason I do it and I’m sure the real reason we all do this. The rush starts almost when you arrive at the race track and continues until long after the race is over. It’s funny, but after any race I almost feel the next day like I’ve got a hangover.”