Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Eating others’ dust no longer: MacCachren finally wins Mint
Las Vegan snares off-road race that has eluded him since 1984
It has been a week of breakthroughs for talented, star-crossed auto racing drivers from Las Vegas.
Six days after Kurt Busch took the lead on the last lap of the Daytona 500 and pulled away to the victory, ending an 0-for-15 run in the Great American Race, it was Rob MacCachren’s turn to have the racing gods smile upon him.
The youthful-looking 51-year-old demon in the dust was 0-for-forever in The Mint 400 before taking charge about 50 miles from the finish en route to being crowned the unofficial winner of the Great American Off-Road Race on Saturday.
MacCachren, one of the legends of his sport and a 2011 inductee into the Off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame, has won more than 200 races during a long and brilliant career, including the Baja 1000 four times. Somehow, The Mint had managed to elude him. It eludes him no more. “How do you do this?” said the Clark High graduate as he struggled to remove the cork from the big bottle of champagne on the victory platform as thousands cheered. “This is harder than the race.”
MacCachren’s time over three laps of the 116-mile course originating behind Buffalo Bill’s in Primm was 5:37:35. Jason Voss of Cupertino, California, was second at 5:38:39, with San Diego’s Andy McMillin third at 5:41:36.
McMillin was leading the final time around the wind-swept, rock-strewn course before sustaining a flat tire. MacCachren said he went the whole day without a flat and dutifully thanked BF Goodrich along with Rock Star and Ford and his other sponsors after he finally popped the champagne cork.
“The Mint 400 draws the best Trick Truck drivers on the planet, and today we were the best one of those,” said the gracious winner. “Three of the last five years we were leading on the last lap before having a mechanical (problem). It really feels good to get that monkey off my back.”
Nobody seemed to mind the cliche as this was a race MacCachren, the son of an off-road racer, had been trying to win since 1984.
“Some of the media were beginning to ask me — I said ‘stop,’ ” MacCachren said about always coming up short in The Mint. “So it’s good they won’t have to ask me anymore.”
Brock Heger of El Centro, California, was the unofficial winner in the limited class that left the starting line at the crack of dawn. The 17-year-old’s time was 6:08:54. Wisconsin’s T.J. Tuls was second at 6:10:38, with Roger Starkey Jr., of Burbank, California, rounding out the podium finishers at 6:11:53. Each was driving a Class 10 buggy.
Information was sketchy on Jay Leno’s race. The former “The Tonight Show ” host and automotive enthusiast added his name to the long list of celebrity drivers who have competed in The Mint 400 by leaving the starting line just before 7 a.m. in a nearly stock Toyota Tundra. Race officials said when he turned the SUV over to his co-drivers, he looked extremely fatigued.