OFF-ROAD RACING AT COLISEUM : Millen Takes a New Ride to an Old Destination

There is an adage in racing: “New cars go fast, old cars win races.”

It is also true that given the choice between a fast car and an old car, a race driver will take the fast one, figuring that sooner or later it will be a winner.

That is the way Rod Millen is approaching tonight’s Grand National sports truck race, feature attraction of the Mickey Thompson Off-Road Gran Prix in the Coliseum.

Millen, a transplanted New Zealander who lives in Newport Beach, will leave a four-cylinder Toyota truck in which he has won two races this season to drive a new V-6 model turned out less than a week ago by Cal Wells’ Precision Preparation, Inc., shop in Santa Margarita.

“It was built especially for the Coliseum, which is the longest and fastest stadium course we run all season,” Millen said after testing for two days at PPI’s simulated stadium track in Camarillo. “I can’t wait to get it in a race. It handled perfectly after we worked out a few bugs in the power steering.”

Millen, 40, who will drive with series champion Ivan Stewart on the Toyota V-6 team, won at Phoenix and in the Rose Bowl in the old-model truck. He also won in the Coliseum in 1988, driving a Mazda pickup.

Adding credence to the racing adage, Stewart this year discarded the four-cylinder truck in which he won five stadium races and his third series championship in 1990, to drive a new V-6. After six races, Stewart is still looking for his first victory.

“The old trucks are still very strong, but we’ve squeezed every drop of speed out of them that we can,” Wells said. “With the new trucks, we have our work cut out for us, but we think we have more avenues to find speed.”

The Coliseum, with its longer straightaways, uphill runs through the peristyle and 80-foot jumps back to the field, is the best place to showcase the V-6s. A crowd of 40,000 is expected at the site where the late Mickey Thompson held his first stadium event in 1979.

“The PPI crew worked night and day to have my truck ready for the Coliseum, so I am looking forward to getting its first win Saturday night,” Millen said.

A first victory will have to come from a 10th-place start in the 12-truck field, Millen having run into trouble Friday when a rock kicked up by another vehicle fractured a knuckle on his left hand.

Ford driver Rob MacCachren nipped the Chevrolet of Danny Thompson to claim the pole with a lap of 46.056 seconds. Walker Evans was third in a Dodge and Greg George fourth in a Chevrolet.

Team Toyota has won eight consecutive manufacturers’ championships, but after six events this year it trails the Dodge team of Evans and Glenn Harris in points, 472-460. Evans is also the individual leader with 272 points to 222 for Stewart and 213 for Millen.

MacCachren will be going for his third consecutive stadium victory tonight after winning at Seattle and Dallas. However, because the Dallas race was ruled a non-points event because of a heavy rainstorm that wiped out qualifying, he is only fifth in the standings.

Driving in two eight-lap heat races and a 12-lap main event--a total of no more than a half-hour--is in marked contrast to Millen’s other assignment. He drives a Mazda RX7 in the Asian-Pacific Rally, which he won in 1989.

There are five events--one each in New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and India--where racing is done at 10,000 feet and higher in the Himalayas.

“Each rally lasts four or five days and runs 1,500 miles,” Millen said. “But we practice for at least 5,000 miles before each race, making rally notes and learning the course. It’s a real logistic headache because the events are usually far from civilization, and we take two cars, four service vans, 14 people and sometimes all our food and water from the team’s headquarters in Huntington Beach. The whole operation lasts two to three weeks.

“Curiously, I find some real similarities between stadium racing and rallying, because in both you’re always on the ragged edge of being out of control. You’re always doing a balancing act with your car. If you’re not thrashing in the corners and turns, you’re not going fast enough, but if you’re too far on the other side of the line, you’re losing time or crashing.

“The hardest part in both events is being patient when your foot wants to go faster. You must know how to slow down to go fast.”

Millen also won the Pikes Peak Hillclimb earlier this month, driving his Mazda rally car to a record time in the open class.

Six classes of vehicles will compete tonight, starting at 7:30. Gates will open at 5, with the traditional off-road Meet the Drivers autograph session at 6.