Alex Morales Motorsports
Alex Morales Motorsports was a racing team active in sprint cars and Indycars for several decades. The sprint car team won multiple championships between the 1950s and 1990s while their
Early years and Sprint Cars
Alex Morales, born in 1908, came from a family that had early success in the food industry with Tamale Carts in Los Angeles. Morales started entering sprint cars in California in the 1920s and continued for several decades. His “Tamale Wagon” sprint cars (named after one of his most popular products) enjoyed tremendous success around the tracks of California for many years, with their first championship coming in 1959 at the hands of Chuck Hulse. Morales continued to run Sprint Cars into the 1990s.[2]
Indycars, 1970s
In the Mid 70’s Morales got together with former
Breakthrough and success in the 80s
As a result of the 1979 USAC/CART split, Morales decided to race in the CART series with Carter running their now aging Lightning Chassis, however he was only able to manage 13th in the standings as the Offenhauser engines were becoming increasingly obsolete. In 1980 Morales continued with Carter but were able to upgrade to a Penske-Cosworth combination, which saw a significant improvement as Carter finished 5th in the points, with a best finish of third at Michigan. The success with the Penske continued into 1981 as Carter won the team's first race at the Michigan 500 and finished third in the CART standings. Carter followed that up with an impressive third-place finish at the 1982 Indy 500 as the Morales team became one of early adopters of the March chassis program but the next two seasons as a whole were not as successful, not recording a single top 5 finish in both the 1982 and 1983 CART seasons (the Indy 500 was not a CART points race in 1982). For 1984 Carter was replaced by
Alfa Romeo and the end
Despite the death of Alex Morales in November 1988 the team forged on as the factory Alfa Romeo team for 1989 with specially designed March chassis.[7] Unfortunately the engine development was behind schedule and they only made their debut at the fifth round of the championship in Detroit where driver Roberto Guerrero finished 8th in what would end up being the best result of the season for the Morales Alfa Romeo as unreliability and a horsepower deficit saw Guerrero only score points in one more race, a 12th-place finish at Mid-Ohio. At the end of the season the Alfa Romeo program and Morales CART franchise was transferred to Pat Patrick whose re-founded Patrick Racing team moved into the former Morales shop in Indianapolis.
References
- ^ "CART to Deal With Disarray in Its Meeting - Los Angeles Times". latimes.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
- ^ "Hall of Fame Inductees | National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum". sprintcarhof.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
- ^ "1975 California 500". champcarstats.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
- ^ "1978 USAC National Championship Citicorp Cup". champcarstats.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
- ^ "YouTube". youtube.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
- ^ "Alex Morales | Motor Sport Magazine Database". database.motorsportmagazine.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
- ^ "Morales, Veteran Car Owner, Dies : Sponsored Drivers of Indy and Sprint Races Since 1950s - Los Angeles Times". latimes.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.