Surprisingly, for as long as both had been around the elite levels of drag racing and despite living just 500 miles from each other, Top Fuel racer Clay Millican and team owner Dexter Tuttle never had met.

But starting a month from now, when the National Hot Rod Association’s Mello Yello Series season opens at Pomona, Calif., with the Winternationals, they’ll be seeing a lot of each other as associates with the Parts Plus Dragster.

It didn’t take Millican long to tell Tuttle, “You’re crazy.”

Mind you, this was coming from a fun-loving fellow who talks almost as fast as his Parts Plus Dragster runs, thrives on junk-food lunches from gas stations, and gobbles bologna sandwiches like some people would chocolate-chip cookies.

But he told Tuttle he was nuts because he came from the boat-racing world.

If Tuttle’s crazy, he’s Millican’s kind of crazy.

Tuttle defended his love of the dangerous boat-racing sport: “It’s fun!”

But then the truth came out: “I’m like, ‘It probably is, but I can’t swim.’ “

Said Millican, “We have a swimming pool at home [in Drummonds, Tenn., near Memphis]. And [wife] Donna makes sure the boys [Cale and Dalton] are out there if I ever get in the pool, which is never. When we first got it, she was like, ‘OK, boys, y’all stay out here. Daddy’s in the pool.’ It’s true. She made the kids stay out there with me if I was ever in the pool.”

So don’t look for Millican ever to go boat racing with Tuttle.

“If he was to go boat racing, I’d go watch,” Millican said. “But I don’t think I’d be behind the wheel – unless . . . Well, no, I won’t be behind the wheel. Maybe I could wear the little floaties on my arms or something.”

Millican and Tuttle will stick to dry ground. But they’re both hoping they make a big splash in Tuttle’s return to fulltime racing since Steve Torrence left his operation in mid-2011 and in Millican’s 17th season racing in the NHRA.

Although Millican won an International Hot Rod Association-record 52 Ironman trophies and six consecutive Top Fuel series championships, he is hoping he’ll get that elusive first NHRA event victory. He came close in 2013, with four runner-up finishes for a total of eight final-round appearances.

He said Tuttle’s resume makes him hopeful.

“Dexter is a very capable tuner himself,” Millican said. “If you look back, when Dexter was out there fulltime, he won races with JR Todd and he was in the top 10 with Steve Torrence [as a single-car entrant in a multiple-car-dominated class].

“So it’s going to be good,” he said of his new alliance with the Fort Worth-based businessman.

Tuttle will tune the car, with help from crew chief Jimmy Walsh and drag racing veteran Tony Shortall. Nick Boninfante Sr., known for decades simply as “Nitro Nick,” will advise with the Parts Plus team’s clutch program.

Boninfante’s reputation includes his success with popular Northeast vintage U.S. Male Funny Car and the 1980s-era Raybestos Funny Car that Richard Hartman drove. Moreover, he was one of Millican’s earliest Top Fuel advisors.

“He’s like family to me,” Millican said. “I was so naïve when I was going to go Top Fuel racing. He just kind of took me under his wing. He is who connected me with Peter Lehman and Mike Kloeber.”

Millican and Kloeber, his engineer-tuner, teamed for those six straight IHRA crowns, five of them in the Lehman-owned dragster.

With the latest cylinder heads, newest superchargers, and other upgrades to shave off weight – much of it purchased from Don Schumacher Racing – the Parts Plus Dragster should be grabbing its share of the on-track attention in 2014.

And, Millican said, Tuttle “just got one of the lightest drivers in the business.”

Millican’s weight has leveled at about 145 pounds for years in spite of his lack of culinary discrimination.

Tuttle always has raced in good faith and enjoyed respect from his colleagues throughout the pits, but his cars, though sound, weren’t always equipped with the fanciest parts and pieces. But this season he has no need to apologize. This Parts Plus Dragster should run with the Al-Anabi, Schumacher, Kalitta, and Lucas cars.

“I certainly think it can,” Millican said. “With all the parts and pieces that he has updated, I don’t see why not. He’s got everything in place to do it, and I’ve been down the racetrack a lot of times.

“This is going to be a good car,” he said.

Of course, he said, “we are a little bit behind as far as getting things done, because we got this deal done on Christmas Eve, actually. They were working on getting the contract finished on Christmas Eve. We know as far as uniforms and vinyl [wrap for the car] and that sort of thing, we’re behind. But race car-wise, it’s ready to go. Dexter was preparing for this upcoming season, not knowing that it was going to be me driving.”

The opportunity arose during the off-season, and Millican said, “It was just a good fit. Parts Plus has been with me going on four years now. Dexter was planning on running his car, and I was looking for a car to drive.”

“Dexter has a couple of successful businesses (ColorFast and Liquid MPG), but Dexter is a racer through and through,” Millican said. “He has raced for many, many years.”

Both team owner and driver are energized by the business-to-business opportunities.

“We’ve been busy exploring those,” Millican said, adding that Tuttle didn’t waste much time, once the partnership was locked in, to travel to Memphis to the Parts Plus headquarters to visit with the marketing experts there.

He said the business-to-business opportunities for Tuttle’s Liquid MPG fuel additives company and Parts Plus certainly exist and that they might be there, as well, for ColorFast, Tuttle’s tile and grout company.

“Whether you see it on the surface, there is always business-to-business stuff that can be done,” Millican said. “Those opportunities are out there.”

Mike Lambert, president of the Automotive Distribution Network, said, “Complemented by a first-rate motorsports marketing program, which includes nationwide hospitality events and promotional opportunities with our primary manufacturer partners, our ongoing partnership with Clay Millican ensures that our Parts Plus members continue to effectively reach the end user—the professional who throws away the box.”

No matter at what rate those B2B partnerships develop, Millican said, “The support from Parts Plus and the manufacturer partners was absolutely amazing last season, and we’re focused on winning a championship as part of TMS in 2014.”

Because Millican traveled to Texas as late as this first full week of January to get fitted for the car and Tuttle needed to hire a few additional crew members, they don’t have time or resources to go testing.

However, Tuttle hired three-time, between-jobs Top Fuel champion Larry Dixon last September to take the car on some shakedown runs during the AAA Texas Fallnationals at the Texas Motorplex.

“The Dallas race was a good place for him to go step on the gas a couple of times and see where he’s at and get kind of a leg up getting ready for this year,” Millican said of Tuttle.

He said he hasn’t spoken yet with Dixon for any pointers regarding the subtleties of the car “but I probably should.”

If Millican ever wondered about his choice to join Tuttle Motorsports, he got a reassuring – and unsolicited -- phone call from someone whose identity he revealed only as “a prominent racer.”

The voice-mail message simply said, “All I can tell you is that Dexter is a really good man. You cannot go wrong with Dexter.”

Steve Torrence made his Top Fuel debut with Tuttle in 2006 and remained with the team through the Atlanta race in 2011, after earning his first top-10 finish at No. 8 in 2010. He left Tuttle to organize the family-owned team he races with today.

JR Todd, Ron August Jr., and Alan Bradshaw also have driven for Tuttle.

“Everything’s in place. The car’s ready to go,” Millican said, “and I’m so excited and ready to go!”

And this is one instance in which Millican doesn’t have any fears about diving in and going for that long-awaited NHRA Wally statue. In a sense, both he and Tuttle threw a lifesaver to each other.

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