Strong Season Results in 10th Place for Miller

It’s almost scary how Christian Miller started the 2008 Grand-Am KONI Challenge Series Street Tuner (ST) season. The Californian, driving for Karl Thomson’s Compass360 Racing team finished the first four races on the schedule in the same position - sixth.

“It was a hell of a year,” Miller said, ironically, after the season. “Karl was awesome to drive for.”

But that’s not the whole story. In addition to taking another sixth-place finish later in the year, and six top 10s overall, Miller drove four cars with eight different co-drivers en route to finishing 10th in the standings.

His season started with the Fresh From Florida 200 at Daytona International Speedway, where he drove with Kevin York in an Acura TSX. The duo, which was supposed to be teamed together throughout the entire season, returned to sixth at Lime Rock Park, where Miller finished for the first time in his career.

“I had raced at Lime Rock five times coming into the season,” Miller said, “and this year was the first time I had finished there, so that personally was a highlight.”

And while many things stayed the same at Mosport International Raceway, the season changed drastically at Compass360’s home track. In practice, York was involved in an accident, totaling the car and forcing him out of competition for a short period.

With that TSX out of commission, and the Honda Civic Si destroyed in an accident at Lime Rock, Miller earned the assistance of Travis Walker to the team’s unretired Acura RSX. Together, they finished sixth.

“And that basically started the round-robin of drivers,” Miller said.

Billy Johnson, who moved to the Grand Sport (GS) class fulltime for the 2008 season, returned to ST competition at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, and he helped Miller in another sixth-place effort. The luck - call it good or bad, depending whether you’re superstitious or not - changed at Watkins Glen International, where Miller and Beau Buisson finished 23rd.

Miller entered into development of a new Honda Civic Si at Iowa Speedway, and he drove the car in each of the final five races. He was eighth at Iowa Speedway with Benoit Theetge, and sixth - again - with Theetge in Le Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres.

Then the bad luck returned. Running fifth with 10 minutes remaining at Thunderbolt Raceway at New Jersey Motorsports Park, Miller and Nicholas Rondet’s No. 74 machine was involved in an accident, which dropped the duo back to 33rd at the finish. Even worse, they failed to secure any points.

In the penultimate race at Miller Motorsports Park, Miller and Robb Holland were trying to earn more points, and were running third on the last lap before running out of fuel and finishing 22nd.

“That was the hardest loss,” Miller said.

A 15th-place finish in the Bosch Engineering Twin Six Hours at Virginia International Raceway dropped Miller - who was co-driving with Buisson and Johnson - to 10th in the standings.

“In each of those instances (New Jersey, Miller Motorsports Park and VIR), the car was there,” Miller said. “In fact, the car was there in every race…The first half of the season, we had some good luck; the second half, a little more bad luck.”

Miller said he is pursuing another year of driving for Compass360 Racing in 2009.

(Originally published on Grand-Am.com)