The big, black Bill Miller Engineering 18-wheeler racked up more than
10,000 highway miles in the last two months, ferrying the BME Okuma Top
Fuel dragster from the team's headquarters in Nevada to NHRA national
events in Tennessee, Illinois and Ohio. In that same period, the black
and yellow BME dragster logged three miles in qualifying and
competition. Along the way, the BME team ran steady 4.60s, won a round
in eliminations, and won dozens of friends for drag racing.
"We had guests from Okuma, Sandvik Coromant, and Infinity Rebuild at
the events in Bristol, Chicago, and Norwalk," said team owner Bill
Miller. "It never ceases to amaze me how much our guests love standing
in the pits, watching the BME crew take the car apart, put it back
together, and then fire it up. Most have never been to a drag race
before and have no idea what goes on between runs, so it really is a
lot of fun to share our world with first-timers.
"Okuma even sets up the 'Bill Miller Theater' inside their hospitality
trailer," he continued. "We have a projector that's hooked up to a
laptop computer, and I can show the guests the data from a run,
complete with video, on a big screen. I explain that racing a Top Fuel
dragster is like running a three-axis CNC machine without a controller
– and since they work with very sophisticated machines, that is an
analogy they can understand.