The only timetable for Tony Schumacher’s debut as a team driver for Rick Ware Racing is for the 2025 Countdown to the Championship and maybe a few races ahead of the playoffs.
When it does happen, Clay Millican will be sailing in uncharted waters.
Millican will finally have an honest-to-goodness teammate for the first time in his career.
“It’s going be interesting,” Millican admits. “Me and Tony have talked a lot because I’ve never had a teammate. I’m not used to that — I’ve asked him a ton of questions about it — so it’ll be interesting for me. I’m looking forward to it. I mean, I have no hesitation. The truth is, I could have stopped this whole thing. Rick Ware said, ‘We’re doing this, and your team is the cornerstone of what we’re doing. But here’s the opportunity, here’s what we can do.’
“And I’m like, ‘Let’s do it.’ You can’t argue with the credentials the guy brings. It’ll be fun to pick somebody’s brain because everything I’ve done has been trial by fire [for me] basically.”
Truth be told, both drivers have enjoyed sustained, excellent careers.
Schumachers hold the NHRA’s Top Fuel high-water mark for success with eight series championships, 88 national-event wins, and 62 No. 1 qualifiers. He is the most successful Top Fuel driver in NHRA history.
Millican is IHRA’s most successful Top Fuel driver, owning six world championships and 51 national-event wins.
One edge Millican does hold on Schumacher is two sportsman victories while racing in IHRA’s Modified Eliminator — and one of those came when he showed up at the track without an engine in his dragster.
Schumacher has always had respect for Millican, and it became magnified in 2017, on Father’s Day weekend when the latter won the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway.
“He’s just a cool dude,” Schumacher said. “I stood there for his first win in Bristol. I actually freaking told him in the morning, ‘Oh, I have a funny feeling about today.'”
This premonition came long before Schumacher lost in the first round to Scott Palmer. He said he remembers passing on his gut feeling to Millican, who at that point had not won an NHRA Wally.
“I said, ‘I’m sticking around. You’re going to win this thing,'” Schumacher recalled. “I was at the finish line because it’s Bristol — you can stand on there. Man, it was so close. It was Leah [Pruett] and I thought she had won, but his light came on and I was like, man, a lot of stuff had happened that day, man. It was really cool.
“A fan had brought his son, who had passed away, his son’s chest protector that his son had signed, and he goes, ‘I think this was your son’s first autograph.’
“I’m like before then, ‘Man, there’s a lot of signs pointing to this being your first win.’ So that was cool. He wasn’t a teammate at the time, he was just an opponent. But I just stuck around to watch. It was weird. So maybe that was some insight I had, who knows?”
And as Millican sees it, that’s the day two loners found common ground.
For years, Millican has considered himself somewhat of a Top Fuel outsider. For him to have a legend the likes of Schumacher in the same pit area will be a nice transition.
“I’ve never been part of the Brownsburg [Indiana] Club,” Millican said. “I call them the factory teams. If you think in terms of motocross, the factory teams, and they’re all in Brownsburg, and I’ve never been part of that. So while I like and am friends with a lot of people out here, I’m not calling people during the week that I race against. And I don’t dislike anybody, but I’m not part of that group.
“A lot of people may read this and think, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous. You’re with them all the time.’ Do I speak and hug their neck? Absolutely, I do, but I’m not where they live. These people see each other and all that. I’m in Drummonds, Tennessee, I’m not up there. So it’s just always been different. Obviously, I come from the IHRA side, so I’ve always been kind of the oddball.”
Back in the day, Schumacher’s former team, fielded by his father Don Schumacher, was part of the Brownsburg Club, but Tony lived in Chicago; he moved to Austin, Texas, several years ago.
“He’s a little bit of an outsider as well, a little bit,” Millican said with a laugh.
Millican’s recent win at the NHRA Winternationals, he admits, was a bit outside the lines.
“Looking back on it, it was an awesome day,” Millican said. “For me, behind the wheel, I had a day. I had a day. I put it in golf terms several times. That’s like winning a major. But let’s put it in terms of people that can’t play golf like me, but you go to the golf course one day and it’s like, ‘Dang, I hit the ball and it went straight. Dang, I made a putt and it went in.’
“That’s what happened. I mean, I killed the tree. We won on a holeshot, we won on a pedal job, and I had a day. I wish I had them all the time.”
Millican beat Tony Stewart for the win in Pomona, and with the victory came some sage advice from Schumacher.
“Tony talked about that. I’m like, ‘Dude, I wish I could do that all the time.’ And his response was, ‘That’s what makes those days special, where you made a difference for the team.’
“Typically, a driver obviously wants to do his job, but typically it’s because you did something wrong, and people may not even know it. You might’ve got a half a tire out of the groove and it smoked the tires, and it’s your fault. So a lot of times, it’s just low ET gets the win or whatever. But it’s fun for a driver when you can look at it and go, ‘Hey, I had something to do with it today.'”
One thing both will have is a solid fanbase. Schumacher will bring with him those who have followed him since his rookie runner-up debut in 1995 and his championship runs.
Millican, in addition to those who have adored his good ol’ country boy approach since he started racing Top Fuel in 1999 to his social media superstar breakout.
“Do I have the biggest YouTube channel in the world? I don’t, but I do have a lot — a lot of people that watch a lot,” Millican admitted. “I am now finding, I might be in the airport, I might be wherever … people know I drive a race car, but they know that from watching YouTube. It’s just amazing. One thing that really makes me happy is how many people, and it’s a lot, come to the first-ever drag race because they found me on YouTube, and it made them come to a drag race.
“That’s really freaking cool that that happens, that me being my normal goofy self on YouTube makes somebody spend their money to come watch a drag race. So that helps drag racing, and then I love that.”
Schumacher believes he can hold his own down the strip, but in social media circles and YouTube, he’s definitely okay being in a supporting role.
“He is a stud,” Schumacher said. “It’s cool. He has a good amount of following on that thing. I love that the shows are fun. He’s freaking a happy guy, you know what I mean? And so often every podcast we watch is people bitching and complaining, and it’s all negative stuff. He’s just a big old smile, man. Fun. It’s fun. It’s fun to be around. I need that.
“I’ve been racing for a long time, and it turns into business and it’s like, ‘You need to be around him, man, because he reminds you that this is fun.’ None of us need to do this. We do this because we love doing it. I think it puts me in a good spot.”
And Millican as a teammate?
“There’s no doubt about it,” Schumacher added, “he’s going to be the ultimate teammate.”
