SCCA: Mitsubishi takes 2nd consecutive overall win, Rally Veteran makes comeback
4 June 2000
The 24th consecutive SCCA Susquehannock Trail ProRally came to an exciting conclusion in the early and very chilly (35 degrees F, 1 Celsius) hours of Sunday morning, with the top 10 filled with both familiar and unfamiliar names. Paul Choiniere, the 7-time SCCA Overall Champion, maintaining a commanding lead throughout much of the event fell by the wayside as darkness fell, and Doug Shepard, absent from the Championship for several years, made a strong comeback with a remarkable second place finish. Karl Scheible and Jon Kemp swapped top places for the balance of the night, with Scheible's FIA Group N Lancer Evo V coming out on top and Kemp taking third. Key Notes: ¨ The second leg re-seeding brought several surprises, with the most notable being from two New York City based Irish teams. Thomas Lawless started leg 2 in 6th position, after starting the rally earlier in the day in 24th. Besting that was Celsius Donnelly, who restarted in 8th, with an morning start in 36th. ¨ The #589 entry of Peter Cunningham, the current points leader in the GT category of the Speedvision Cup road racing championship, and PTG/BMW driver in the ALMS series, had the hood up, valve cover off, with TAD Motorsports technicians pulling bits of valve spring out of the head during the afternoon Parc Expose. Regardless, Cunningham was happy to be back in the rally hot seat "I'm having more fun than a barrel full of monkeys" said Peter as he watched the crew re-assemble his engine. While he was down to just three cylinders for the balance of the event, his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI - the first of its generation to be rallied in North America, still made enough power to keep Cunningham in the top 5, finishing 4th overall. ¨ Eric Comas continued his learning curve with trees, this time giving an oak a nudge with the left side of the car. (the right side was the recipient in SS4) even though the tap was not hard, Comas' Evo wound up high on a berm, putting all four tires in the air. Mechanically, the car was fine, but having to wait for a tug off the berm at the end of the stage caused the team to be time-barred from finishing. ¨ Paul Choinere and Jeff Becker were enjoying a nearly three-minute lead over Doug Shepard through SS8, began experiencing gear selector problems in SS9 and retired the car at the start of SS10 when he was unable to find any gear at all. This left the last remaining Hyundai, a third Tiburon on its maiden rally voyage, to carry the companies banner for Championship points. A production class Tiburon, the car was driven by Andy Bornhop, a motorsports editor for Road & Track magazine. ¨ Thomas Lawless' brilliant run lasted through SS10, when, running 5th overall, he drifted his Mitsubishi Eclipse over a tree stump and nearly removed the rear axle from the car, ending his evening. ¨ Peter Lahm, driving the #10 RallySport magazine 95 Lancer Evo IV, and maintaining a solid top 10 pace all day, rolled the car in SS9, coming to rest on its roof. Fans nearby got the car righted again, and the car could have continued on. Unfortunately, both tires on the side that rolled blew out, and Lahm carried only one spare, bringing to an end what could have been an excellent finish. ¨ Henry Krolikowski's first ProRally event with his Subaru WRX-Sti was an eye opener, both for him and fans alike, who saw the ex-ProDrive car for the first time in this country. Finishing a respectable 12th overall, and 2nd in Group N, the team chose to pace themselves from the beginning, learning the car's prodigious capabilities and, as any experienced finisher at STPR knows, keeping his speeds lower than some to ensure a finish. ¨ The strong finish by Mitsubishi, Hyundai's lucky entry of three cars instead of the usual two, and the growing field of Subarus brings the Manufacturer's Championship into a virtual 3-way tie heading to the season mid-point event at Maine Forest in July. ¨ Scheible's win now places him in a substantial overall lead in the Driver's Championship, with a 22 point advantage over Paul Choinere, and 29 points over Noel Lawler, the 1999 Series Champion. Quote: Karl Scheible: "Can you believe it! The Lancer ran perfectly all day, never missing a beat. We really didn't go into this event looking for an overall. With an 8-car Group N field, my focus was on being first there, but a shot at the overall really came into view by SS9. We drove like crazy, and the car kept delivering the goods.