Clay Millican’s Fathers Day Top Fuel victory at Bristol – poignant because his first in NHRA competition not only came in his home state of Tennessee but on a day he had dreaded after losing son Dalton in a motorcycle accident – just might be the most popular drag-racing victory ever.

However, another one might have come right on the heels of Millican’s triumph at Bristol Dragway.

This one might have been a little embarrassing – with the accent on the last three syllables.

Evan Bader, track announcer at Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park, threw down – and guaranteed he’d throw down his clothes - if Millican scored back-to-back victories at his family’s racetrack at Norwalk, Ohio, the following week.

In a public declaration on Facebook – which officially makes it legally binding in all 50 U.S. states and three territories – Bader, son of showman Bill Bader Jr. and grandson of racing ringmaster Bill Bader Sr., said in a June 25 post, “Dude, if Clay Millican wins the Norwalk Nationals, I’ll run the quarter-mile naked. And that’s a promise.”

The Baders are men of their word, but the long and the short of it is that Evan Bader didn’t have to let it all hang out. Millican defeated Scott Palmer – the singing-impaired Countdown contender who himself has promised to belt out “Boomer Sooner” when he earns his first NHRA trophy – then lost in Round 2 to eventual winner Steve Torrence.

And verification from the Huron County, Ohio, Superior Court confirms that the offer was a one-time bargain that is past its expiration date.     

Nothing could top the victory “on Rocky Top,” anyway.

“It was an absolute picture-perfect weekend,” Millican said, still savoring the moment during the Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways, near Seattle. “For years I’ve been saying when the time was right it was going to happen, and the time was right. It was a phenomenal weekend. That’s a Hollywood script, it really was. We had the best car of the day, and when you have the best car and win lights come on, you get a Wally at the end.”

“You know, nothing will probably ever top that weekend because of the circumstances, being Father’s Day and all the things that went along with that,” he said.

The next picture-perfect weekend could come this weekend, especially if he can get past first-round opponent Scott Palmer.

“Four more win lights,” Millican, the International Hot Rod Association’s most successful  Top Fuel racer with six straight championships, said.

“You know, we have a car capable of winning on any Sunday now, we really do,” he said of his Parts Plus/Great Clips/UNOH/Fraternal Order of Eagles Dragster for Stringer Performance.

“And we’ve been working . . . let me rephrase that . . . Grubby [crew chief Dave Grubnic] and the boys have been working to make this a car that’s capable of beating all the cars out here. And we really are there. We’ve had a couple of opportunities since Bristol that we probably let get away from us, but these guys are always working to make sure that we can run with any of them.

“And it’s a never-ending mouse trap,” Millican said. “These things, you’ll think, ‘OK. I’ve got ahold of it, and things are good, and then they’ll throw you a curveball. We kind of had that in Sonoma last weekend, but if you go back and look at Chicago and Denver, we had a really, really good race car. And we got beat.

“But it will happen again. That will not be our only win,” Millican vowed. “My hope is that we win them all. But our game plan is to really, really be on point during those last six races. The last six are definitely the most important, and that’s where our focus is.”