Terry McMillen’s IHRA Top
Fuel victory Sunday in Edmonton produced the kind of happy ending that often
appears in Hollywood scripts but rarely in life. McMillen, who cut his teeth
driving Nitro Funny Car before taking a hiatus from the sport, has now officially
fought his way back into the fuel ranks.

 The journey back has often
been painful and the road strewn with obstacles. McMillen and wife Rhonda
suffered the loss of a son as well as Terry’s blindness from a contact lens
solution defect. That’s why he smiled wider than ever on Sunday. McMillen’s
victory was payback.

“It has been a tough road
to get to here – a horrible road,” McMillen said. “The greatest thing about
that victory is that I was able to drive in the daylight because it gets dark
for only a short time in Edmonton. That helped me to see well enough to make it
through just fine.

“This makes up for the
setbacks because we should have been racing a year ago. I underwent another
surgery a week ago and the doctors gave me medical clearance. They keep trying
to make the eye better. My eye isn’t to the level it needs to be to be
considered fully back, but it is well enough that we can do this safely.

Pro Stock driver Mike Edwards and his Young Life Pontiac team got some valued
assistance at the O'Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway as
three young men from Young Life's Capernaum Ministries became "team members"
this past weekend as guests of Mike and his wife Lisa. The trio was at the track
Friday and Saturday for an up-close look at the inner workings of a professional
drag racing team that few get to see, and they also received a goody bag filled
with a shirt, hat and other race collectibles.  Fellow Pro Stock competitor and
defending series champ Jason Line also stopped by on Saturday morning to sign
autographs and take a few pictures to complete the fun-filled weekend. 

Young Life Capernaum Ministries is a program of Young Life established
for kids and young adults with disabilities, giving them encouragement and the
chance to have fun, make friends and have fellowship like their able-bodied
peers.

"This group's from South Carolina, and they always make a trip to
the NHRA race at Atlanta," Mike Edwards said. "We always see them there. They
just wanted to get away, they wanted a little road trip, so we invited them up
and provided for their hotel and transportation - it's a racing weekend on us.
We got them some shirts and a lot of neat stuff, and they're having a big time.
They're special people. I tell you what, you think you've got hard times, and
you see these young men, and it will make you change your attitude
fast."

Borrowing a page from father-in-law John Force's playbook,
Robert "Top Gun" Hight hopes to have new pipe beneath him this weekend in Denver. 

Although there purportedly is no difference between the
McKinney chassis the team has used the last four races and the one it
is adapting for this week's event, Hight and crew chief Jimmy Prock
agreed that it was time for a change because something has been very,
very wrong with their track record-holding Automobile Club of Southern
California Ford Mustang, the first Funny Car to break the 4.80 second
barrier at altitude.

After terrorizing the Funny Car division through this season's
first half dozen races, winning twice and posting the two quickest
quarter mile times in Funny Car drag racing history   4.644 seconds at Pomona, Calif., and 4.634 seconds at Phoenix, Ariz.   the 8,000 horsepower Ford suddenly has developed a split personality.

Hillary Will, who drives an 8000-plus horsepower Top Fuel dragster, is in the
Denver area this weekend for the 28th annual NHRA Mopar Mile-High Nationals, a
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series event being run at Bandimere Speedway in
Morrison, Colo.  But while her focus will be on racing, she plans a side trip
tomorrow (Thursday) with her Grandpa, Dad, and brothers, to Greeley to visit her
heritage.

Along with her brothers, Hillary’s guide will be her Grandpa,
Connie Will, who was born in Greeley, Colo.,  in 1930 and raised in the area
before leaving at age 17 to join his father in California.  Her Grandpa was
actually, Connie, Jr. and was known during his childhood and teens as “Chipper”
or just plain “Junior.”

Chipper’s grandfather came to Colorado from
Germany in the late 1800s to work for Coors as a head brew master.  His dad
followed his dad to the USA in 1903.  In 1910, they left behind the city life,
rounded up the cows, and headed in horse and buggy about 50 miles north to what
is now the Greeley area to homestead.  Twenty years later the third generation
of the Will Family in America – Connie, Jr. or Chipper – came
along.

With additional time needed to regroup and get things up and running at his new
team shop in the Florida panhandle, NHRA Pro Stock driver Tom Hammonds has
decided to forego racing at the next three events beginning with this weekend's
Mile High Nationals in Denver.

"This is the best direction for our
team," said Hammonds. "Obviously it would be nice to continue to keep running
the season and running the races, but we have bigger fish to fry, so to speak.
We have a brand-new race shop we have to get finished, and we could continue to
keep running up and down the track, and across the countryside on the NHRA
POWERade circuit, but you know, at the end of the West Coast swing we'd be in
the same position. We wouldn't have our shop totally functional and we wouldn't
have our dyno totally functional.

"I sat down with Jimmy Oliver, Harry
Turner and Jerry Eckman, and we came up with what we feel is the best plan, and
that is taking one step back so that we can take two or three steps forward.
That's what we're doing now. We also consulted with Fred Simmonds at GM Racing
and he agreed that this was the best thing for us to do. We've come back to
Holt, Fla., with the goal of getting our shop and dyno totally functional so
that we will have a chance to compete at a high level."

Rowdy Gaines was once the fastest man in the pool. Now, the three-time Olympic
gold medalist will see the fastest racers in the world compete when he attends
the 28th annual Mile-High Nationals at scenic Bandimere Speedway on Saturday,
July 14. Gaines will be a guest of Tim Buckley and the David Powers Motorsports
team.

Gaines was a standout at the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles when
he dominated in the pool earning three Gold medals (100 meter freestyle, 4x100
meter freestyle, and medley relays). Known as the voice of swimming, Gaines has
called swimming action for CBS, TNT and ESPN. He worked his fourth Olympics on
NBC during the ’04 Athens games. Gainesville was named World Swimmer of the Year
in 1980 and ’84. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in
1995 and the Olympic Hall of Fame in 2005. He now serves as the CFO for USA
Swimming and resides with his family in Colorado Springs, Colo.

If you think the management of Bristol Dragway had a
tough time back in May with the postponement of the event, roll back the time
machine to 1971 when, in the middle of a national event, an exhibition jet car
removed the asphalt in chunks with the rap of the afterburner.

What can you expect from a
car called the “Super Cyclops?”

Track owner Larry Carrier
knew the car was a big draw when it reeled off the sport’s first five-second
run with a 5.96 elapsed time at over 280 miles per hour. It was the encore that
caused everything to go all to hell.

The powerful J-79-powered
(the same as the Bob Motz Kenworth) blew large chunks of the asphalt through
the ground floor windows of the control tower.

Race over? Not hardly if you
know Carrier.

Throughout Bristol Dragway's long history, which dates back to its
opening in 1965, the greatest names in drag racing history have made
their marks in Thunder Valley.

This year four remarkable men have been selected as the inaugural class
of inductees into the Legends of Thunder Valley. They are NHRA founder
Wally Parks, Larry Carrier, who built Bristol Dragway, "Big Daddy" Don
Garlits, named the best driver in the history of NHRA, and Rickie
Smith, who has more Bristol wins than any other driver.

"I honestly don't think we could have a finer group of men inducted as
Legends of Thunder Valley this first year," said Bristol Dragway
president Jeff Byrd. "All four of these gentlemen are legends in the
sport of drag racing and each of them has a special place in the
history of Bristol Dragway. We're extremely proud to be honoring them
in this way."

Hugh Scott gets out of shape during the ADRL Independence Drags at
Motor Mile Dragway. He emerged from this tangle with the retaining wall
uninjured. (Roger Richards Photo Sequence).

The NHRA POWERade series begins the traditional three-race Western Swing this
weekend starting with the 28th annual Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway
nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The GM Racing contingent of
quarter-mile competitors is in the middle of what has already been a grinding
string of consecutive weekend events that began in Englishtown, N.J., on June
22-24, and will reach its conclusion in Sonoma, Calif., on July 29.

A
pair of Chevy Cobalt competitors who seem to be getting stronger as the summer
heat intensifies are Jeg Coughlin Jr. and Dave Connolly. In the last six races,
beginning with the O'Reilly NHRA Nationals at St. Louis in May, at least one car
in the tandem that makes up the Cagnazzi Racing juggernaut has advanced to a Pro
Stock final round, and collectively, Coughlin and Connolly have rolled to four
national-event victories in seven final-round appearances.

Since the
beginning of May, the 37-year-old Coughlin has driven his Jegs.com Chevrolet to
the winner's circle twice, posting victories at Chicago and the just completed
O'Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Tenn., to go along with
runners-up at St. Louis (to teammate Connolly), Englishtown, and an April
runner-up performance in Las Vegas. At the season's halfway mark, the two-time
NHRA Pro Stock champion has now moved within 86 points of first-place Greg
Anderson and virtually erased a points deficit with the Summit Racing Pontiac
driver that just a month ago, many thought was insurmountable.