Photo: Jeffrey N. Ross
The day before the main event was held for the 2014 Red Bull Global Rallycross at the Daytona International Speedway, Rhys Millen questioned whether his dated and underpowered racecar could keep up with the high-dollar teams competing in the series. When the dust settled, Millen and Hyundai were celebrating their first wins in the fourth season of this exciting and budding racing series.
Aside from the new Hyundai Veloster body, the chassis, engine and all other components and technology are essentially more than a decade old. To pull off his victory, Millen simply outdrove the competitors around the track, which was almost a mile long and consisted of mostly paved driving surface. This was the first time GRC raced at Daytona, and the long track provide lap times that were more than doubled most of the other venues the series has visited so far this year.
Millen qualified fourth, but he quickly took the lead by choosing the shorter joker lap on the first lap. And that proved to be a wise decision as the race, after that, was just a battle for second. Millen held off Ken Block and his Ford by almost two seconds and Subaru’s Bucky Lasek rounded out the podium finishing about 11.4 seconds behind the winning Hyundai.
“To my team, really, is where I need to tip the hat. We had a test on Monday and changed some of the front differential settings. The car put a huge smile on my face on the test on Monday,” Rhys Millen said after the race. “It was the first time all year that we had a track this long, all the other tracks the past three races have been short and condensed, with 30-second laps. I was gritting my teeth with the power that Ken makes and the way that some of the other guys have been going all year, could we still stick it to them?”
With the win, this was Millen’s first podium finish of the season, and his first podium since the 2012 season.
Millen qualified fourth, but he quickly took the lead by choosing the shorter joker lap on the first lap. And that proved to be a wise decision as the race, after that, was just a battle for second. Millen held off Ken Block and his Ford by almost two seconds and Subaru’s Bucky Lasek rounded out the podium finishing about 11.4 seconds behind the winning Hyundai.
“To my team, really, is where I need to tip the hat. We had a test on Monday and changed some of the front differential settings. The car put a huge smile on my face on the test on Monday,” Rhys Millen said after the race. “It was the first time all year that we had a track this long, all the other tracks the past three races have been short and condensed, with 30-second laps. I was gritting my teeth with the power that Ken makes and the way that some of the other guys have been going all year, could we still stick it to them?”
With the win, this was Millen’s first podium finish of the season, and his first podium since the 2012 season.
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