Millen Loses but Gets Drift Title

Rhys Millen was having a great night until the final of Saturday night’s Formula Drift competition at Irwindale Speedway.

Millen was the top qualifier and earned the championship of the circuit, in which drivers maneuver their cars into controlled sideways slides at high speeds through a marked course, when Samuel Hubinette was eliminated in the quarterfinals. Hubinette was second in the standings before Saturday.

Millen won his first three tandems and appeared headed toward victory in the final when his Pontiac GTO clipped a pylon. In a sport in which the winner is based on judges who evaluate drivers’ execution and style, the final against Chris Forsberg was ruled too close to call and a runoff was ordered.

In the runoff, the steering on Millen’s car locked going into a corner on the first run, causing it to go into quite a dramatic angle, he said.

After the same thing happened on the next corner, Millen said that rather than risk the possibility of losing control of the car and crashing into a wall, he decided to back off on the second run, giving Forsberg, who lives in Burbank, his first victory.

“We’ve been struggling with overheating temperatures on our power steering,” said Millen, whose season-long championship was his first in 13 years of racing, mainly in rallies. “We run a lot of trick little bits to make the car perform the way we see it do.”

-- Steven Herbert

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Rookie Ryan Briscoe won his first pole, posting the best time at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., for today’s Argent Mortgage Indy Grand Prix.

Briscoe is 15th in the Indy Racing League season point standings.

Helio Castroneves, who like Briscoe has extensive road course experience, qualified second at 107.664, followed by Tony Kanaan at 107.346.

At the same track, Marco Andretti treated his father and grandfather to a pole-winning performance, winning the top spot for today’s Menards Infiniti Pro Series.

Andretti, the son of his car owner, Michael Andretti, and grandson of racing legend Mario Andretti, grabbed the pole in front of both.

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For the second straight year, Sebastien Bourdais won the pole for the Montreal Molson Indy, turning the final qualifying session into a one-man show on the 2.709-mile, 15-turn road course winding around Notre Dame Island.

His fastest lap was 1 minute, 20.396 seconds, a speed of 121.305 mph.

Four of Bourdais’ 13 laps would have been good enough for the pole, and a fifth would have put him second on today’s 18-car grid.

Oriol Servia struggled through most of the session before a lap of 1:20.698 (120.851 mph), which was good enough to give Newman/Haas Racing the entire front row.