It’s not every day that a drag racing team is partly sponsored by an irrigation company, but NHRA Top Fuel racer Clay Millican is proud to not only carry Champion Irrigation Products on his Rick Ware Racing-owned dragster, but also carries the colors of several other blue-collar industrial companies as well.
Millican spoke glowingly about Champion, as well as Arrowhead Brass and Schluter-Systems, in addition to a plethora of other sponsors – many long-time supporters — like Parts Plus, Edelbrock, Summit Racing Equipment, Comp Cams, Weld Racing and Lincoln Electric.
“If you think about it, all of those companies (Champion, Arrowhead and Schluter) are tied into plumbing,” Millican said Friday during the opening day of qualifying for the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway in suburban Charlotte, N.C. “Schluter is in the tile business. Champion Irrigation (is in) plumbing. And Arrowhead Brass makes the fittings.”
In other words, it’s like blue-collar business meets blue-collar racing, where everyone is a winner, from the driver, the team, the fans and the sport as a whole. And nobody is as blue-collar as the 59-year-old pride and joy of tiny Drummonds, Tennessee – population 5,400 and about 30 miles northeast of Memphis.
“It fits right in with me,” Millican said. “It’s my kind of people, plumbers, mechanics, warehouse people. I love it. It’s really, really cool that they’re seeing such a benefit of what is happening in the racing world. They bring customers, they bring clients and they get to hang out here and hospitality, watch the races.”
NHRA drag racing is in the same boat as other racing series in the U.S., including NASCAR, IndyCar, USAC and other series: everyone is looking for sponsors to give their teams not only a competitive edge, but frankly, to help pay the bills to support the racing ventures. Millican gives a lot of credit to team owner Rick Ware, who has a vast portfolio of competing in various racing series.
“It’s just a massive growing thing and it all goes back to Rick Ware’s sharing on all of his platforms,” Millican said. “We are able to entertain so many people at these races that it just keeps growing and the car’s been different at quite a few races this year and all that is showing that many, many companies are loving what’s going on over here.
“And Champion is doing a great job on social media, letting people think about when they need plumbing, they think about Champion Irrigation. Champion’s kind of a good word to be on a race car too, I kind of like that.”
Drag racing is more than just hitting the gas pedal and holding on to the steering wheel while flying down a 1,000-foot drag strip at 330-plus mph. As important as a quick ET and fast MPH is, so too is the business aspect of racing, not just in NHRA, but in all major racing series in the country. Millican gives lots of credit to his team owner, Rick Ware.
“Rick Ware Racing has such a reach,” Millican said. “If a sponsor comes in the door, it gets shared amongst all those platforms and we’re able to reach more people than, far as I know, anybody in racing.
“I don’t know of anybody that’s in all those areas: NHRA Top Fuel, NASCAR, World Supercross and American Flat Track. That’s a wide variety of motorsports and everybody that comes in and works with us is shared throughout every one of those platforms. So companies are obviously liking it.
“We’ve had a lot of different major sponsors on the car with Parts Plus always being there. They are the backbone to this whole program and they’re always well represented on the car. But you start just thinking about this year: Mighty Fire Breaker, we’ve had them on the car, that was the win at Pomona; Arby’s, obviously everybody knows Arby’s; Champion Irrigation this weekend; Schluter, PowerEdge last weekend, which is a division of DENSO. It’s just really cool.
“And next weekend has kind of become a tradition, we will be the Edelbrock COMP Cam’s car in St. Louis. So for me, it’s fun. It’s like, all right, what’s the car going to look like this week? And what’s my fire suit going to say?
Millican comes into this weekend’s 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway still in search of his first NHRA Top Fuel championship, which he’s been chasing since his first NHRA event in 1998.
But Millican is no stranger to championships or wins. He’s acknowledged as the greatest Top Fuel driver in International Hot Rod Association history, having won six championships in seven years (2000-2007) and 52 wins in the same time period.
Winning the prestigious U.S. Nationals last season propelled Millican to have the motivation and confidence that the NHRA Top Fuel title could very well be his in 2025. He heads into Charlotte this weekend tied for fifth with Shawn Reed. Millican has had a strong year, having won the Winternationals, part of a NHRA career record that includes eight wins, 28 final round appearances, with a best ET of 3.628 seconds and a best speed of a massive 338.26 mph.
He also reached the final round in both Norwalk and Brainerd, and is coming off a No. 1 qualifying spot in the Countdown to the Championship playoff opener last weekend in Reading, Pa.
Millican’s best season finish in the NHRA has been third in 2018. But as the saying goes in baseball, “Hope springs eternal,” and Millican is a firm believer in that phrase, feeling that this year could finally be the year he earns his first NHRA championship. He knows he’ll have to get through a stout crowd of rivals including Tony Stewart, Doug Kalitta, Steve Torrence, Brittany Force and others, but with the sponsors and fans already on his side – and by the way, Millican’s pit area is almost always one of the most popular for fans to visit – he already has a spot on his mantle next to his six IHRA trophies.
“Yes, NASCAR is the 800-pound gorilla in the motorsports world in the United States, but what we can do in drag racing is the hospitality side of it. NASCAR, and I’m very much a part of what Rick Ware does in NASCAR – in a couple of weeks we’ll be entertaining a group from Parts Plus at the Charlotte Roval – but you can’t have several hundred, you’ve got to limit it down to how many people are coming just because once the race starts, you don’t have the access to the race car and the driver like you do in drag racing.
“So we do a whole lot over here in hospitality and we have for years and years. The hospitality side is what drives Parts Plus to stay here. This is year 14 or 15 that they’ve been my major sponsor and it’s because of what you can do with hospitality in drag racing that you really don’t have that anywhere in circle track racing because once a race starts, the car’s on the racetrack.
“Racing’s what we love and you know I love talking (and) I love entertaining people. So the hospitality thing for me is just fun because I can go pack the parachutes, mix fuel, help on the race car and then I can come over and tell stories and racers love bench racing and hospitality area gives me a great opportunity to bench race.”
