It took popular Top Fuel driver Clay Millican 254 NHRA starts before he captured his first Wally at Bristol, Tenn., last June.

The second Wally for Millican came much quicker – eight more races to be exact.

Millican won the rain-postponed Heartland Nationals Monday in Topeka, Kan.

Millican clocked a 3.727-second elapsed time at 332.59 mph in the finals to defeat Terry McMillen, who slowed to 6.169 seconds at 104.47 mph.

“This is incredible,” said Millican, who pilots the Parts Plus/Great Clips/UNOH/Strutmasters sponsored dragster and won for the first time after qualifying in the No. 1 position. “It’s awesome the work Grubby (David Grubnic, Millican’s crew chief) has put in and all the kids who work on this car. They are unbelievable about not making mistakes. This car is really good, and we found some consistency. All year we know we must be consistent and Grubby found it. This was a long weekend, but what a weekend.”

The race was scheduled to be completed Sunday, but that didn’t happen. The start of eliminations was delayed for hours Sunday before racing finally begin. The first two rounds of eliminations were completed in Top Fuel and Funny Car Sunday and then the race was completed Monday.

Millican’s victory march had him collecting wins over Terry Totten, Doug Kalitta, Tony Schumacher and then McMillen. Millican improved to 11-5 in eliminations against McMillen and this was the first time they met in a final round.

“It’s just crazy how good the car was running,” Millican said. “To be honest with you, it pretty much didn’t matter what I did because that car was going to win (Monday). A long, long time ago when I first started Top Fuel Shirley Muldowney told me when it is your day it is easy and at this moment it was kind of easy. Of course, all the hours we spent (Sunday) all the rain that didn’t feel so easy, but I have to tell the truth, it is all the people who work on that car. What a weekend. It is such a team effort, that makes this thing go. There’s no one person who makes this thing go. I have to say my heart goes out to everybody with the horrible tragedy we had in Santa Fe (Texas). That’s a horrible thing. I know what is like to lose a child and I don’t wish that upon anybody. It’s a horrible, horrible thing and it will take a long time for those people to get over it. I know that it is off topic, but it certainly was on my heart (Monday), and I was thinking about it.”

Dalton Millican, Clay’s son, was killed in a motorcycle accident in August of 2015. He was 22.

Actually, Grubnic is no stranger to winning at Topeka as he has two career Top Fuel victories at Heartland Park in 2005 and 2012.

“We didn’t even talk about that,” Millican said. “He’s so focused and he’s so fun to work with. When it is time to run that car, it is game face 100 percent. He was really in a hurry to get the data out of the car even when we turned on the win light in the final round. The car just ran so good. It didn’t hurt any parts. Everybody can gripe and complain all they want about this track prep, but this car went 3.67 and it went 330-something mph and it just kept going down this race track. To me, this is the easiest way to level the playing field. It doesn’t cost the teams any money to do it and NHRA is saving a little money spraying glue out there. There’s nothing wrong with the race tracks. It is just tuner, tuner, tuner and right now we have the baddest man on the planet.”