---

Prescott Forest ProRally wrapup: Championship and Back-to-Back Wins for Lawler

4 October 1999

PRESCOTT, Arizona — The Michelin SCCA ProRally Championship went seven
rounds before anyone won twice this year. Now, just one event later,
the series has its first three-time winner, first back-to-back winner
and 1999 overall champion -- all in the form of Noel Lawler.

    Lawler and navigator Charlie Bradley started the event
first-on-the-road after their teammates discovered an oil leak on
their car immediately prior to the start. From then on, the Irish
expatriates had things pretty much their own way, as their remaining
challengers fell victim to attrition one by one. Their long day among
the ponderosa forests and rocky cliffs surrounding Prescott was
anything but a walk in the park, but they could breathe increasingly
easier as mechanical problems sidelined competitors or dropped them
out of contention. In the end they had built a comfortable
eight-minute lead over the second-place car in their factory Hyundai
Tiburon.
 
   The win clinched the 1999 overall driver’s championship for Lawler
and the navigator’s crown for Bradley.
 
   Second overall went to Group 2 winners Mike Whitman and Flynn
Baglin, who were in a classic Datsun 510. At the finish they had a
four-minute advantage over the second Group 2 car. That was the Honda
Civic driven by Bryan Hourt and Pete Cardimen, who also had run second
overall, until a minor lapse bit them and dropped them down the order.

    Group 5 winners Ralph Kosmides and Joe Noyes brought their Toyota
Supra Turbo home third overall after a rally long battle with Henry
and Cindy Krolikowski, in a Dodge Shadow. They dueled throughout the
event, trading fast times until the panhard bar on the Krolikowski car
broke. At the next opportunity, the Krolikowskis lashed it back into
place and continued on, but they could no longer match Kosmides, who
was driving what he called the rally of his life. Kosmides got the win
by about 45 seconds.

    The closest finish of the event was in the Production GT class,
where first and second were separated by just three seconds, with
third only 26 more further astern. Seamus Burke and Tom Lawless were
the victors, in a Mitsubishi Galant VR4. Roger Hull and Sean Gallagher
were second in an Eagle Talon; and Patrick Richard and Ben Bradley
were third in a Subaru Impreza.

    One of the cars attracting the most attention during the rally was
the factory Daewoo Nubira of Peter Malaszuk and Derek Szerejko. In
only the car’s third event, Malaszuk and Szerejko took the Production
Class win in a determined drive that brought them home an impressive
ninth overall. However, what’s even more remarkable is that, had a
freak electrical gremlin not struck them at the start of the rally’s
final stage, they would have finished as high as fifth overall.

     The final round of the Michelin SCCA ProRally Championship will
be the D&N Bank Lake Superior ProRally, which will take place in
Houghton, Michigan, on the weekend of October 21-22.
                                                     — WRG —
PF-0002
10399
>