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MILLEN AND HOWARD TAKE MINI-PRICE NEVADA PRO RALLY
LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- In one of the most hotly contested Pro Rallies of the 1979
season Rod Millen and Mark Howard survived 800 miles of killing desert roads to
claim top prize at the Mini-Price Nevada Rally. Driving their specially prepared
Ford Escort, Millen and Howard put over 17 minutes between thenselves and second
place finishers Ivan Stewart of San Diego and Cam Warren of Santa Monica in their
Ford pickup truck. Third went to John Smiskol and Walt Krafft of Chicago in a
Triumph TR-7.
The rally had been very close for nearly all of its two days with the primary
opposition coming from Dan Goodwin and Rod Sorenson in their Alitalia Fiat Brava.
After 750 Miles and 20 hours with the end in sight, the Fiat hit one of the
crunching washouts on the course and broke a transmission throughput shaft. At one
point early the second day, Goodwin had closed to within a minute of the Escort.
The last Pro Rally where these two drivers went to head (the Valvoline 20 Mule
Stages in October) Millen was the one with the bad luck. He rolled the Escort and
Goodwin went on to win.
Another team who had the potential of winning went out very early, but not before
they showed just how fast they could go. Hendrik Blok and Reed Flickinger in Blok's
Plymouth Arrow won the first stage by over a minute. On the next stage the Arrow's
oil pressure started to go and by the end of the stage, all of the car's vital fluids
were on the ground and the engine had seized.
Millen also had oil problems early on and ran the first three stages with almost no
oil pressure at all. The problem was traced to a kink in an oil line and it was
repaired at a service stop. "We had to be very careful at first," said Millen,
"because we didn't know whether the engine would make it or not. Once we got it
fixed, though, we were really able to get it on."
Only 17 of the rally's 53 starters were officially classified as finishers. So rough
were some of the roads that half of the cars went out of the rally before noon of the
first day. Unlike most rallies in the US, the Nevada Rally was run entirely in the
daylight on both Saturday and Sunday.
Production Class honors went to Guenter Kern and Bonney Adams in a Datsun B-210 after
another Arrow driven by Ron Docie went off and got stuck for over a half hour while
leading the class. The rally had one of the largest Production Class fields ever with
15 cars.
The Nevada Rally may have been long and tough but the rewards to the winners were
the best ever at a Pro Rally. In all, Mini-Price Motels and the SCCA put up the
$15,000 to be distributed among the winners with Millen and Howard pocketing $5,000
for their efforts.
Millen's win also assured him of at least a share of the North American Rally Cup,
the combined US and Canadian rally championship. Only Canadian National Champion
Taisto Heinonen has a mathematical chance of catching him.
The Mini-Price Nevada Rally was the 10th in the Pro Rally Championship. The final
event of the season, Sno*Drift, will be held December 8-9 in Grayling, Michigan.
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