It’s going to take awhile for the smile to recede from the face of Top Fuel fan-favorite Clay Millican.

Why? Simple.

Millican did the improbable, capturing the coveted U.S. Nationals championship Monday from the No. 13 qualifying spot. It was the most prestigious victory in the long career of the driver from Drummonds, Tenn., who won six consecutive IHRA Top Fuel crowns before beginning a full-time NHRA campaign in 2007.

“Oh, if you just watched us through qualifying, going into session No. 5, it's like we may not even make the show. We were sweating bullets, to be honest with you,” Millican said. “And I was told, and I want to go on and just tell this really quick ... (Terry) McMillen, Millican, everybody remembers those days messing up the names? I think it was 2018.

“He qualified 13th (then). We qualified 13th (now). That's kind of cool. Obviously, Terry McMillen is a good friend, and we miss him out here. But I'm glad the McMillican – I think that's how the announcers used to say it, McMillican – I joined the club. I got a Wally sitting right there from the U.S. Nationals.

“I am just speechless, to be honest with you, but y'all know I'll keep talking anyway because I love talking, especially when it comes to drag racing. This whole team today was one of those days where the only thing that could go wrong was if I did something wrong. The car was so good. I was told over and over and over again, ‘Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.’ It's just one more step. No matter what's going on, no matter how beat down you are, can you make one more step? And we made one more step into the winner's circle of the U.S. Nationals.”

Millican became only the third driver in the 70-year history of the U.S. Nationals to win the title from the No. 13 spot.

Millican etched his name into Indy’s history books by clocking a 3.792-second elapsed time at 327.82 mph. He powered past four-time world champion Steve Torrence’s tire-hazing 4.317-second lap in the final round at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.

“Dude, you're looking at a guy that's been an underdog his whole life. I grew up in Drummonds, Tennessee. I worked in a little bitty mom-and-pop grocery store. Then I was silly enough to go to work at a food warehouse, and I worked there for 11 years, and a guy named Peter Lehman bought into my dream …,” Millican said. “Literally, I am living proof that if you want something bad enough, you can make it happen. Sometimes you got to want it more than breathing. But underdog mentality, I don't know about that, but I definitely have been the underdog my entire life, I promise you that. But I got a lot of fight in me. I ain't scared.” 

This was Millican’s seventh career Top Fuel Wally and his first of the season. His last visit to victory lane was at Madison, Ill., on Oct. 1, 2023.

“It's incredible. Without a doubt – y'all have heard this before – but it's definitely the ‘want to.’ And that come from my mama, the ‘want to,’ and I've always had it, and I'm going to keep striving to keep doing it until I don't want to,” Millican said. “But right now, the ‘want to’ is strong.”

The win was extra special as it came with Arby’s as Millican’s primary sponsor for the first time on the Rick Ware Racing dragster.

“And now you got Rick Ware who has bought in, and today was so huge because we won three times last year. Rick wasn't at a single one of them,” Millican said. “So, for us to win the U.S. Nationals with him here was huge. Y'all obviously saw we have Arby's on the car. Mr. John was here with us from Arby's. He was on the starting line. He was in every picture that I just took down there. To say that he is a drag race fan now, I would say yes, because this was his first-ever drag race; first one ever. And I'm going to relay that back to talking about big things in my life, big things that've happened.

 

 

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“Bobby (Bennett of CompetitionPlus.com) was referencing a race with no motor, no nothing. Well, I showed up to a race with a young man one time who had never been to a drag race at all. I won my first national event when he was there. That man turned out to be Peter Lehman, who ended up buying a Top Fuel team, and here we are. So, things happen for a reason. I 100 percent believe that. And I'm going to make my sister cry when it's time for the snow to fall off the leaf. That's when it's going to happen. That means something here. Y'all may not understand that, but it does here. And I'm not going to cry. I'm going to make her cry.” 

On Sunday, Millican defeated two-time reigning U.S. Nationals champion Antron Brown, Josh Hart and two-time world champ Brittany Force before ousting Torrence in the finale.

Millican acknowledged his first national-event win in his home state of Bristol, Tenn., is No. 1 in his heart. That emotional, tear-filled win came on Father’s Day in 2017, two years after the death of his 23-year-old son Dalton in a motorcycle accident. 

But Monday’s victory is one that was almost as meaningful. 

“The Bristol win, hands down, and I've said this a million times, I don't care how many races I win, nothing will ever top Bristol, including the U.S. Nationals,” Millican said. “And I'm going to honestly sit here and say that, but at the same time, this is like winning the Super Bowl, winning the Daytona 500, the World Series, you name it. This is like career-defining kind of stuff. I am so proud of everybody who has worked right along with me having the ‘want to’ to keep me out here. There are so many people who have been involved. Parts Plus, for example, has been with me for over a decade. That's a long-time-running sponsorship, and it's those kinds of people who have bought into my dream that allowed me to continue to do this.”

Millican’s victory is the ultimate drag-racing reward for Ware, a NASCAR owner who bought Millican’s team in late August 2023 and brought much-needed financial stability to the team.

“Let's think about it. He (Ware) came Friday. He has two NASCAR teams that were in Darlington (S.C.), and he did not go to Darlington, him or Robby Benton, president of Rick Ware Racing,” Millican said. “Now, they did sneak off and go to the Springfield (Ill.) Mile, where Rick has the Parts Plus Flat Track, American Flat Track team, but he was right back over here. Neither one of them have had a whole lot of sleep because they drove that back and forth. But it was cool to call him last year and say we won, but it's nothing like being there. There's no replacement for that.

“Rick bought into NHRA drag racing mainly because as a kid, he wanted to be a Top Fuel driver. He wanted to burn nitro, and he went into NASCAR racing. But that dream was still there for him and somehow, some way, he decided, ‘I'm going to do this.’ And lucky for me, it was me. He kept us out here, and he continues to give us the support needed. It's not always easy. It's easy enough to look back at how many points we've lost this year. … We have stood on this thing trying to be quick and fast, and we have. We've been really quick and fast, and that's all just people pushing forward trying to make us the best – and today, we were the best.”

 

 

 

Up next for Millican is the six-race Countdown to the Championship, which begins Sept. 12-15 in Reading, Pa.

Not surprisingly, he’s optimistic about what his team can accomplish with the aid of some Indy momentum.

“I think there is no limit, to be honest with you. All last year, after all those wins last year, you can go to my YouTube channel and you'll find where all the kids ask every one of them, ‘How many races are we going to win this year?’ And most of them said six, so we got one. I'll take five more in the Countdown, I'll just be honest with you. I'll be absolutely good with that. But walking with Rick, he was definitely in that mode of, ‘I can't believe this.’ He just kept saying it. ‘I just can't believe this. I can't believe that we just won the U.S. Nationals.’

“And he's like, walk, walk, walk. Then he would kind of look at me and he's like, ‘Dude, we just won the U.S. Nationals.’ And I'm like, ‘Yes, we did.’ And hugged my neck and he's like, ‘Listen .. this is career-defining stuff for you right here. You will forever be known as the U.S. Nationals champion.’ And I said, ‘So will you.’ It's his dollars and cents that make this thing go up and down the road, so he forever is the U.S. Nationals champion as a team owner.”

The focus for Millican now is trying to claim his inaugural NHRA Top Fuel world championship. He finished a career-best third in the points in 2018.

“I've always known we're in the fight for that championship. And to be honest with you, y'all don't take this wrong, but what we did today don't mean nothing when we show up at the next race, unfortunately,” Millican said. “Them dogs out there in that pit, they're going to be biting. They're like, ‘Mr. U.S. Nationals champion, I'm going to kick your butt first round if I can,’ and that's just how it is. But it gives us momentum. It definitely moves us in a direction of (knowing) we can win. We proved it last year, but we have obviously been like a yo-yo this year, up, down, up, down.

“We run fast at different times, but what this does is give us confidence that no matter what's thrown at us, we can go rounds. And I will say that we ran the same short block all weekend. It's really cool. And that just tells you that Jim O (Oberhofer) and Nicky (Boninfante) are doing an amazing job. They talked this morning about, ‘We're putting our Countdown setup in here for (Monday), because it's the U.S. Nationals."