Top Fuel racer Clay Millican considers himself an old soul in drag racing. and said if given the chance, he would travel back to the 1970s to race against legends such as Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney. The veteran from Drummonds, Tennessee, said he would have stayed loyal to dragsters despite the era being better known for Funny Cars.

“I certainly would be in Top Fuel because that’s what I dreamed of, and fortunate enough that that’s what I’m doing,” Millican said. “Scoot me back to the [era] of Big Daddy and Shirley … I would like to be in that mixture.”

Millican said he would have enjoyed competing on track and exchanging smack talk with the sport’s biggest personalities. “I’m not smart enough like Big Daddy, but I can talk a lot … I would’ve loved to have been in that mix and running good,” he said.

He said the traveling lifestyle of that era resembled his current schedule. “Match races two or three nights a week, count me in, man – that many opportunities to stomp on that loud pedal,” Millican said.

He acknowledged that Funny Car drivers had more match-race opportunities, but said Garlits and Muldowney thrived in dragsters. “Count me in. Shirley, Big Daddy era – I would love that,” he said.

Asked where he would have ranked among 1970s stars like Jeb Allen and Richard Tharp, Millican said Garlits would have been tough to beat. “Maybe if you snuck Austin Coil over to tune the thing, that might’ve been a pretty good duo,” he said.

Millican said he never had much interest in switching to Funny Cars despite some career uncertainty. “At 10 years old, 1976, I watched a match race … and that imprinted in my brain that I wanted to drive a Top Fuel car,” he said.

Though opportunities to drive Funny Cars came up, Millican said his career always remained in dragsters. “At one point … I thought I was going to have to drive a Funny Car, but it just always worked out as a dragster,” he said.