MILLEN’S WEEKEND OF MAYHEM
Tue, 2009-07-21 19:01
NMRA Digital
“Extremely struggling weekend,” said, Millen who won the Pro Outlaw title.
Millen started the weekend battling issues and finished on an equally troubling crescendo.
NMRA Racer Legs Out A Tough Weekend In Joliet
NMRA Digital
“Extremely struggling weekend,” said, Millen who won the Pro Outlaw title.
Millen started the weekend battling issues and finished on an equally troubling crescendo.
The Dearborn, Mi.-based Millen fought ignition problems while in the pits and those issues continued into the first qualifying session. Those ignition problems eventually cost Millen the weather-shortened first day of qualifying.
“It didn’t sound right when I started it,” Millen said. “It popped and the throttle sticking … at the end of the day on Friday, we just called it a day.”
Millen made the field on Saturday, using his only run in Saturday’s qualifying session to run the third quickest lap. If only it were that easy for Millen.
He almost didn’t make that first elimination run. Millen started the car but the throttle hung open. The initial diagnosis was a header leak.
He also heard a big pop, a noise that signaled a cone had blown out of the header.
“We had to take all of that stuff apart because you just can’t get the header out of my car,” Millen admitted.
The header repaired, Millen fired the car as a precautionary measure, and when he thought the previous problems were a thing of the past, another round of challenges presented themselves.
“I heard this unbelievable banging and knocking … like it was a dropped valve or connecting rod or something,” Millen explained. “We’ve had so many issues with the car, mostly user error and stuff we’ve done with the car incorrectly. Come to find out it broke a rocker arm. They had just called us and we had ten minutes to make the call.”
Did Millen make the call?
Not only did he roll to the staging lanes in time, but also laid down a 6.695 elapsed time at 210 miles per hour, the second quickest run of the first round, as he bested Jim Brown.
“That was a lucky, lucky pass,” Millen admitted.
Lucky or not, the run signaled Millen was capable of challenging the torrid pace established throughout the event by No. 1 qualifier Doug Sikora.
Millen stopped Conrad Scarry in the semis to advance to the finals where he got the best of Sikora. The problems which had plagued him in the early part of the event began to reappear in the latter part of the day.
“Had some boost problems there too,” Millen said, of his final round victory over Sikora.
His Pro Outlaw victory then pitted him against NMCA Pro Street winner Troy Coughlin in a grand run off.
Coughlin ended Millen’s race day on a pass that had potentially dangerous ramifications.
“Cracked the intercooler,” Millen said. “I went into high gear and it started to do some things. It was under boost when it happened.”
The end result of the carnage was about three gallons of water on the track.
“It was sunny, hot and it evaporated quickly,” Millen said.
Millen plans to attend the ADRL event in Columbus, Ohio, but only after visiting Skinny Kid Race Cars for some repairs and upgrades.
He is hoping for a less challenging outing than the one he just got through in Joliet, even though he got lucky when it was needed.
“I’d rather be lucky than good any day,” Millen said.
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