The trip was a rite of passage.

Young Clay Millican had never been to a major drag race without his mother or father, and one weekend clear back in the last century, the teenager from Drummonds, Tennessee, located outside of Memphis, set out for a points race at Atlanta Dragway.

Full of teenage gusto, Millican was ready to conquer the world or at least the Super Gas field in his 1972 Duster. That is, until he met up with past NHRA series champion Sherman Adcock Jr., who put a convincing whipping on the enthusiastic driver.

Let the record reflect that Adcock couldn't hold a candle to what Millican did Friday night during the Top Fuel Q2 session at the NHRA Southern Nationals, the seventh stop on the 24-race NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series.

Millican, as he so eloquently puts it, stomped on the loud pedal en route to a 3.758 elapsed time at 331.12 miles per hour, good enough for an Atlanta Dragway speed record.

As the sun set on a mid-80-degree day, Millican understood clearly the language his dragster spoke Friday evening.

"It’s pretty obvious if you just look at the history of the car this year,  if we raced at night, I would be pretty happy," Millican said. "The car’s the quickest in the world, and I’m proud of that. I know we won’t keep that forever, but we’ve obviously had a little bit more of a problem when it’s hot outside.

"It’s so funny, we had a little delay there and I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, we’re kind of moving into that Grubby kind of area there," Millican said. "I honestly try my dangdest when I’m belted in the car, I can see his hand go into the clutch timers but I can’t tell if he’s speeding it up or slowing it down. I’m like stretching and pulling on my chin strap but I can’t tell if he’s speeding it up or slowing it down.

"I knew what we went up there to run was not a .75 because the best run at that point was a 3.87 I do believe. And then a couple cars right in front of us got the tires loose 300 feet out or so. And so I thought, ‘Okay, he’s probably slowing it down just to make sure we go."

Crew chief David Grubnic attacked the electrical box and clutch can with all the fervor of a mad scientist on a whim.

"At one point, we drive by radios, I’ve got radios in the car, they called Little Justin. Little Justin is our clutch guy. And Little Justin’s at about the 300-foot mark and they called him, ‘You need to hurry up and get back to the car."

"And so Little Justin’s probably going to figure out that he might need to start running some. He had to run from all the way at the 300-foot mark back. When they called him back, I’m like, ‘Grubby’s not slowing it down, he’s speeding it up because I knew when they were getting in the can, they weren’t taking weight off at that point, they were putting some weight on."

Nothing says letting the big dog eat like speed, and Millican's beast was ready to eat up every opportunity before it.

"What does still surprise me, and it’s starting to happen more frequently, is that this car’s starting to run speed," Millican said. "If you look last year, we didn’t run speed. Although at Phoenix this year, we went 335 miles an hour, which for two pairs of cars it was the fastest in the world. But to go 331 here in Atlanta’s pretty dang cool.

"When I get in this car now, my confidence level is at an all-time high because I know that we can outrun anybody. It’s been a long time. I’ve had that feeling before, it’s just been a long time ago. But I know when I get in that car that we can outrun anybody here at any given time, doesn’t matter the circumstances, especially if it’s cool outside, you know we can lay one down.

"Last week in Charlotte, we went down the race track, we were close to high-fiving as much for going 3.84 at 323 miles an hour as we were for going 3.62 at 322 miles an hour because that’s the first time this car went under power at a 3.80 run. That was huge for us because Grubby’s been really struggling to get this car to slow down. We don’t want to give up the power level that we have because it’s obviously an advantage when you’re at a drag race to have a lot of power."