Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technologies Raceway in Madison, Ill.
 

 

 

1. Millican Sweeps Illinois – Whether it’s official or not, Clay Millican, the likable Top Fuel driver from Drummonds, Tenn., is now the Illinois State Top Fuel champion. When Millican defeated Leah Pruett in the finals of the NHRA Midwest Nationals in St. Louis (which is actually Madison, Ill.,) he swept the NHRA events that were both staged in Illinois dating back to May, when he won the Route 66 Nationals.

“Man, what a day. This is huge,” Millican said. “He gave us a hot weekend, and man (crew chief) Jim O (Oberhofer) showed again that when it’s hot out, look out. We got away with a couple, but we outperformed the cars we raced, and I am so proud. I mean, this was huge. Jim O will quickly tell you, ‘Give me a track above 90 degrees and look out.’ Needless to say, with the perspiration on my face here, it’s above 95 degrees, and it was all day. I am already talking to the man upstairs. Bring on the heat in Dallas, baby.”

Millican has no visions of a championship but a top-10 finish is clearly in his sights.

“Three wins for this Parts Plus team is huge,” Millican said.

2. Hagan reminds them he’s still in the championship hunt – It’s pretty hard to ignore Matt Hagan. The hulking past Funny Car champion, who more resembles a WWE wrestler than one of the best drivers on the NHRA’s Camping World Drag Racing tour, handed out bodyslams to the competition like they were candy. His last victim was Ron Capps, who is one slot ahead of him in the championship standings in second, as both trail Bob Tasca III. Hagan bodyslammed Tasca in the semifinals to narrow the championship deficit to just 31 points. 
 
 In a scene reminiscent of Al Pacino’s iconic final speech in Any Given Sunday, Hagan admits the Tony Stewart Racing team got together to “talk.”
 
 “We sat down as a group, and you look across from each other, and you go, ‘I’m going to dig for you. You dig for me, and let’s make this stuff happen,’” Hagan said. “I think that’s what it comes down to is just a core group of guys who you want to work hard for, and you want to show up for. (Sunday), they all showed up. They showed up for me, and I felt like I showed up for them, and we did what we needed to do on the starting line and on the racetrack, and that’s why we had four win lights.”
 
Hagan, driving for Tony Stewart Racing, clocked a 3.991-second elapsed time at 324.90 mph to edge Capps, who came across the finish line in 4.025 seconds at 306.88 mph.

“I just asked for something great today, man, and that’s what we got,” Hagan said. “We knew that we had to win this race to be in the hunt for this thing (a world championship). It’s such a cool feeling to have American Rebel out here and Andy Ross, and for them to get their first win and give him the trophy and just to be a part of that. I just hope that he could feel some small amount of excitement that I felt just as being a sponsor and being able to drive the car and turn the win lights on, and just having such great sponsors with Dodge and Johnson’s Horsepowered Garage and just people you just get along with. It’s just like, ‘Man, this has all come together, and it feels like it’s meant to be.’ Nothing’s ever really pushed or forced, and I just am enjoying the ride.”

Hagan, who has won nitro Funny Car world titles in 2011, 2014, and 2020, wants to add No. 4 to his resume.

“I want it more, plain and simple,” Hagan said. “It’s just the drive, the dedication. I haven’t taken a round off yet in the driver’s seat, and I’m not going to. As far as reaction times and keeping it in the groove and doing what we’re supposed to do, it’s about manifesting something into reality. If you want something bad enough, you go out there and make it happen for yourself.

“There’s not a whole lot to separate the parts and the pieces, and everybody buys from three manufacturers, and we all have the same stuff. It’s just about who wants to go up there and have the biggest gut check, open up the most flows, put the most weight on it, what will the racetrack hold, and just bring it, man.”

3. Anderson is drinking again … from the fountain of youth – At 62 years old, Greg Anderson has seen and experienced a lot in NHRA Pro Stock. Admittedly a late bloomer in the class, the John Hagan/Warren Johnson crewman morphed into the winningest Pro Stock driver in 28 years of competition.

In winning this weekend, Anderson was the quickest off the line in all four matches, including a final round against Aaron Stanfield, who was only three years old when Anderson was licensed to run NHRA Pro Stock. In fact, only one driver he beat Sunday, Jerry Tucker, was born before Anderson was old enough to get his driver's license … barely.
 
 He beat Stanfield off the starting line and led him to the stripe, posting a 6.552, 209.92  to 6.567, 209.14.

“I’m back in the game. I’ve legitimately got a shot at this championship with three races to go, and that’s all you can ask,” Anderson said. “I went to the first race at Reading and lost in the first round, and I’ve said it a million times – you can’t win the championship at the first race of the playoffs, but you can lose it. I was knocking on the door of knocking myself out of it. If I didn’t have a big recovery at the next race, I was out of it. I’m back in the fight, and I have a great hot rod, but there are so many great cars and so many great drivers in this class right now. It’s incredible. These next three races are going to be a bare-knuckled brawl.

Anderson now has 103 career Pro Stock victories with Sunday’s triumph.

“From first round on, it’s like racing the final every week. Right now, if you don’t do a perfect job round one, you go home. There’s no telling what’s going to happen from here on out,” he said. “I feel fantastic about the way things have gone these past two weeks. With the job my guys have done on my racecar and even the job I’ve been able to do behind the wheel, it feels great.”

Anderson’s latest victory pulled him into second place in the championship points standings, just 25 points behind Erica Enders, a driver he’s beaten on consecutive weekends.

 

 

4. Herrera’s success indicate Pro Stock Motorcycle division is racing for second place – Some racers compete in a lifetime and cannot win as many races as sophomore rider Gaige Herrera has won this season. On Sunday, he won his eighth race of the year by stopping teammate Eddie Krawiec in the final round.

Sunday’s win was in the same fashion the other seven have been in – qualify No. 1 and demoralize the field. When NHRA announcer Alan Reinhart quipped, “It’s Gaige’s world, and they are all living in it.”

“It was very exciting,” Herrera said. “Hopefully, I still have a job after knocking Ed off, but yeah, it was good. It was good overall for our whole team. All day, I had a very consistent motorcycle, and yeah, it was good.”

Admittedly, one rider concerned him Sunday, and that was his first-round opponent, Joey Gladstone, a rider he’s faced in other race series. Even then it was quick work for Herrera, who threw down a track record with a 6.701, 201.88, which was worlds ahead of Gladstone’s 6.78 aboard a Matt Smith Racing Buell.

As an aside, the Pro Stock Motorcycle division only attracted 14 bikes in St. Louis, the second of three events where the class hasn’t attracted a full field. This season, the fields were full up until Norwalk, when participation began to fall below 16 bikes.

5. Angie Smith injured in Saturday crash – Angie Smith came off of her bike during the Q2 qualifying session and was sent sliding through the WWTR shutdown area, where she sustained broken feet and a severe case of road rash. She was still hospitalized on Sunday. 
 
On the run in question, where her 6.880 elapsed time at 198.93 pass looked like nothing out of the ordinary, it appeared on FoxSport video that something locked up on the bike, throwing her off. Whether it is related or not, this is the second significant crash for Matt Smith Racing when, in January of 2022, a front fork tube failure caused Jianna Evaristo to crash during a private testing session.

 The Matt Smith Racing team all skipped the Q3 session on Saturday.
 
 Angie’s husband, Matt Smith, was unsure Sunday when she would be released from the hospital, adding that they’d like to hurry up and get home to North Carolina, where she could see plastic surgeons regarding the road rash on her arm.
 
“It’s going to be a long road to recovery,” Smith added.

 

 

 

7. Allen Johnson is Factory X’s Speed Merchant – The Factory X division, the highly touted next level of Factory Stock Showdown competition, is slowly getting up to speed. The car counts are not what NHRA hoped for in the inaugural season, but the performance is steadily working its way up to expectations.
 
Former NHRA Pro Stock champion Allen Johnson etched his place in class history behind the wheel of Geoff Turk’s Blackbird X Challenger with a new speed record of 202.55 en route to qualifying No. 1 with a 7.046 elapsed time. Johnson stands as the only FX racer to have eclipsed 200 miles per hour. At present, no one has been in the six-second zone.
 
For his efforts, Jesel, a leader in valvetrain technology, inducted Johnson and Turk as its charter members into their 200 MPH club.

 

 

8. The second-most odd Pro Modified situation ever – As Mike Castellana completed his burnout, he had no idea of the mayhem that had transpired behind him on the starting line at WWTR. His quarter-final opponent, Russian-native Dmitry Samorukov nailed the throttle on his Camaro and made an abrupt right turn into the opposite retaining wall. 
 
Castellana, apparently unaware of what just transpired, continued to back up until he passed the wreckage to his right.

 So, what is the oddest situation in Pro Modified history? In 2001, at the first NHRA Pro Modified exhibition and in one of the first pairs to run, Paul Athey, driving Johnny Rocca’s 1949 Mercury, began his burnout and, just past the tree, took a right and ended up side-swiping Ronnie Hood’s Corvette. The cars sat there for a moment, drivers apparently processing the situation, and then put their cars in reverse, with Athey returning to his lane and being guided back to the starting line by Rocca in Native American garb. Both staged and left, as if the burnout incident was a planned action.
 
 Standing on the sidelines in amazement were Top Alcohol icons Brad Anderson and Jay Payne, who took note of the incident.
 
“They hit each other, they have Indians… we gotta get us one of those things,” Payne apparently said to Anderson.

 

 

 

9. Lazic takes Pro Modified win in debut - Jordan Lazic, driving a Camaro prepared by Justin Bond, likely never anticipated winning in his Pro Modified debut. But that’s what the British Columbia-based driver did, and did so in the simplest fashion. Based on what had happened in the previous rounds of competition, it was probably the best move.
 
Lazic’s scheduled competition, Jason Scruggs, wounded his engine beyond repair in the semifinal win over Khalid alBalooshi. Then there was the quarter-final burnout crash. 

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Justin Bond, Khalid AlBalooshi, and Bahrain 1 Racing,” Lazic said. “I’m just lucky to be here. I was thinking if I didn’t win this race, I wouldn’t have a job in Las Vegas, so hopefully, he’s going to bring me there.”
 
10. The Cowboy Rides Again - Mark Pawuk, once a frontrunner in NHRA Pro Stock, has found a home in a different factory hot eod division. Pawuk took home the title in the Factory Stock Showdown division, qualifying No. 1 and stopping Stephen Bell in the final round. 
 
On his way to victory, Pawuk, who was the No. 1 qualifier, set the national elapsed time record at 7.583 seconds and won $1,000 in the Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown Bounty Program by defeating the previous event winner, Aaron Stanfield.

  “It’s been 22 years since we started in Las Vegas. I finally got another Wally, and that’s the reason why I came back to this sport. Don Schumacher brought me back to get another win. I’ve been close a lot of times, but I had the car today, and I drove good,” Pawuk said. “It was a really great weekend for my entire team. We had a really great hot rod all day. I have to congratulate my entire team and David Barton, who has worked so hard on this program, and it’s paying off. 

"I drove really well this weekend, and it’s just unbelievable. It’s pretty cool.”