Clay Millican rode out his 3.692-second pass at 316.82 mph from Saturday to lead the Top Fuel field at the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals.
 
The driver of his so-called “Little Team That Could” will meet nail-biting Countdown hopeful Terry McMillen, the No. 16 starter, in the opening round of eliminations Monday at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis.           

Millican’s No. 1 qualifying position in the Parts Plus / Great Clips / UNOH Dragster was his first this season and the fourth in his NHRA career.

He said of the four top-qualifier awards he has earned in NHRA competition, “this is certainly the biggest one, no doubt about that. It’s an awesome, awesome feeling.”

“Grubby was pushing today. He really was,” Millican said of crew chief Dave Grubnic. “We didn’t think anybody could go better than a [3.]69, but we were prepared to find out what we could get away with for tomorrow. A lot of people might not think that was a great idea. But the truth is Grubby knows exactly what he wanted to do. We might have gone too far on either of the runs today, but we learned something from it. He’ll take that for Monday.”

That’s when Millican, who claimed six straight IHRA Top Fuel championships and won more races than anyone in that sanctioning body, will bid again for his elusive first NHRA in his 237th race.  He also will go after the $100,000 winner’s paycheck.  

Tony Schumacher, Saturday’s Traxxas Shootout winner, will try to double his $100,000 haul. He’ll start Monday’s runoffs against first-time U.S. Nationals starter Tripp Tatum.

But all eyes will be on McMillen and Leah Pritchett, the two racers deadlocked for 10h place and the final Countdown to the Championship berth.

McMillen, who can’t seem to avoid last-minute drama when it comes down to the Countdown, survived a close call Sunday in his mission to make his first playoff since joining the NHRA ranks from the IHRA in 2007.

His stress will continue Monday morning. And it might appear even more daunting, considering he has to face No. 1 qualifier Millican, in the opening round.

McMillen entered this weekend tied with Pritchett for 10th place. And he made the field on his fifth and final opportunity Sunday to stay in the fight for that elusive last-place berth in the Countdown and extend his streak of no DNQs this year to 18 races.

His 3.895-second elapsed time at 308.50 mph bumped out Australian Wayne Newby, of Rapisarda Autosport International. Then he had to wait anxiously at the top end of the course to see if Newby could return the favor – after sweating out the last-ditch pass of also-unqualified Chris Karamesines. Neither Karamesines nor Newby could slide into the field. That pushed McMillen’s battle with Pritchett ahead one more day.

With one of his engine’s cylinders out early into his run, Newby missed his last chance to qualify by two-thousandths of a second. Karamesines would have had to post a career-best E.T., and he was unable to do that.

“It was close, man,” Mc Millen said, telling of the stress he and crew chief Rob Wendland endured, worry what tuning call to make before his own attempt. In the end, he did what he was supposed to do. “we went down the track A to B,” he said.

“It’s a great day in Indy,” said the Elkhart, Ind., resident whose team works out of Brownsburg, Ind., just about three miles away for Lucas Oil Raceway. “We’re going to have a party – but we’re all going to drink lemonade.”   

Pritchett will race out of the No. 10 spot in the order and square off against Shawn Langdon, the 2013 U.S. Nationals winner and series champion – and someone she has raced against in Jr. Dragsters when they were youngsters in Southern California.  McMillen has raced with and against Millican in the IHRA. So both McMillen and Pritchett know well their opponents, who will help determine their Countdown future.

Steve Torrence, Friday’s provisional top qualifier, was one-hundredth of a second slower than Millican and will start from the No. 2 position with a 3.702-second E.T. He held off No. 3 Brittany Force by a razor-thin four-thousandths-of-a-second margin.

The Amalie Oil Xtermigator Dragster owner-driver has had tough luck in trying to make the playoff field. Twice he lost a tug-o-war with Dave Grubnic for the final spot. Another year he oiled the track and the points penalty knocked him down to No. 11 in the standings and out of the 10-driver playoff field.

With a concerted effort at well-heeled Don Schumacher Racing to keep Pritchett’s playoff dream alive and with her generous Papa-John-come-lately sponsor, McMillen’s quest became that much harder.

“Think mom-and-pop grocery store versus Wal-Mart Super Center,” McMillen’s partner Cori Wickler said.

“We want to do whatever we got to do. My guys are working twice as hard as everybody else out there. Not taking anything away from the other teams, but maybe we don’t have the manpower and we build a lot of our own stuff to make it right for us and our situation so there is a lot more pressure on overall team in general to go there and be as prepared as we possibly can and put our best foot forward,” McMillen said.   

 And once again, his fate has intersected with that of Grubnic, for Grubnic tunes the car of McMillen’s first-round opponent.

McMillen knows the margin for error Monday will be paper-thin.  

“We’re all running these cars on such a fine line,” he said. “It can drop a cylinder that it hasn’t dropped all weekend long and not get you down the track and you get beat. It’s a situation unlike any other, and that’s why we have to run the race. We don’t have 500 miles to fix problems. We have three seconds and you have to be perfect. The guys have to be perfect and that’s what it takes to win in NHRA drag racing. I think when you look at that and the prestige of the U.S. Nationals, it’s certainly on my bucket list.

“It’s got a lot of very deep meanings. I lost my son. And that was one race that we wanted to race at and he never got to see it. It’s pretty special to me,” McMillen said.

“Right now I believe in my guys. I believe in my team. They’re the ones that allowed us an opportunity to get to this level. We have probably one of the youngest teams out there on the NHRA circuit right now as far as working on the car, so they have a lot to be proud of and they have a big fight on their hands. Each one of them are up and willing to go to battle, so let’s duke this thing out, and hopefully the cards fall our way.”

Were it not for the protected-12 system the NHRA uses in qualifying, Wayne Newby could be racing Monday at the U.S. Nationals in his second year here with Rapisarda Autosport International.

He posted a 3.819-second elapsed time Saturday, which was quicker than No. 16 qualifier Terry McMillen’s 3.895. But he had to struggle Sunday, with his previous times erased.  

“It was a disappointing way to end our weekend,” Newby said. “On our first run of the day the car spun the tires off the line then smoked the tires 1.5 seconds into the run. After a quick pedal, we ran a 4.446 and were in16th place.

“In the final session, we watched McMillen go down the track and run a 3.89 to bump our car out of the field. We were confident of running faster and regaining our spot. However, our chances disappeared when we dropped a cylinder early in the run.”

Team owner Santo Rapisarda, on hand this weekend from Sydney, said, “The team gave it their best shot. We knew it was going to be a challenge to come over and race at Indy. I’m proud of my boys, [tuners] Santo Junior and Santino, and all the team. We learned a lot over the weekend, and the team can hold their heads high.”

Joining him on the DNQ list were Terry Haddock, Chris Karamesines, and Luigi Novelli (who, few might know, used to race midgets and sprint cars around the Chicago area and even here when this venue was called Indianapolis Raceway Park).