In the antithesis of his real job, NHRA Top Fuel driver Clay Millican is the host of “Blow It Up,” a new program for SPEEDTV from the fertile mind of creator Rich Christensen. 
 
Christensen, the man behind the successful “Pinks” drag racing program, also on SPEEDTV, selected the exuberant, quick-talking Millican for this new project.  The program features Millican devising a number of ways to blow up engines in cars from an assortment of engine shops.  The debut of “Blow It Up” is scheduled July 21.
 
“Clay is the minister of destruction. It’s his show and his rules,” said Ray Iddings, brand manager of Launch Hour and producer of “Blow It Up.”  “The shops bring out their finished motors (in their cars) and Clay just punishes these cars.  We made it basically the shop against Clay.  He’d tell them what he wanted done – from 30-second burnouts, to launches, hot-lapping, or whatever until the engine fails.


“The owners had the opportunity to opt out if they wanted to, but once the cameras started running, nobody wanted to quit until their cars stopped.”
 
Millican, who already shot the first five episodes at Cordova, Ill., Dragway, said he gets to “choose the number of laps I want the competitors to make and their job is to make that number and my job is to blow it up before they get there.  It’s me vs. the cars.
 
“There were a lot of crazy things being done to race cars.  We had a real assortment of cars – from Volkswagens to seven-second Top Sportsman cars.  We kind of covered the bases; that’s for sure.”
 
This program is definitely a diversion from his real job of driving Evan Knoll’s Knoll-Gas Motorsports/Torco Racing Fuels Top Fuel dragster in NHRA POWERade Series competition.
 
“It was a neat opportunity to do something different,” said Millican, of Drummonds, Tenn.  “To be on the end trying to cause the blowup is certainly a lot different than driving the dragster, where I do everything I can to prevent the engine from blowing up.”
 
A six-time IHRA Top Fuel champion and 50-race winner, Millican admitted to nostalgic feelings when he returned to Cordova Dragway for production. 
 
“Two of my IHRA race wins came at Cordova,” he said.  “I set the IHRA elapsed time and speed records there.  I reset the e.t. record at Rockingham, N.C., in 2005, but no one has bested my 326.16 mph run there in 2004.”