CLAY MILLICAN -- CHARACTER BUILDING SEASON
For Clay Millican and his tightly knit Tennessee-based Top Fuel team,
his first full season competing on the 23-race NHRA POWERade Drag
Racing Series didn't go quite as well as he and car owner Evan Knoll
had anticipated.In fact, it’s a season that he’s already described as fully in the rear view mirror. A recent positive test session in Gainesville, Florida confirmed that attitude. Millican not only proved there’s plenty of fight in his team, but also in a second team expected to join him in 2008.
Make no bones about, Millican knows how to win. Check the records and you’ll find the Drummonds, Tennessee native spent the six years prior to 2007 dominating the Top Fuel landscape on the IHRA tour. The 41-year-old former sportsman standout won six consecutive IHRA world championships (2001-2006) and eclipsed 'Big Daddy' Don Garlits as the winningest Top Fuel driver in IHRA history with a career total 51 national event victories in the class, over double Garlits total.
Six-time IHRA Top Fuel world champion Clay Millican Is working hard to prove he's a champion wherever he races
For Clay Millican and his tightly knit Tennessee-based Top Fuel team, his first full season competing on the 23-race NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series didn't go quite as well as he and car owner Evan Knoll had anticipated.
In fact, it’s a season that he’s already described as fully in the rear view mirror. A recent positive test session in Gainesville, Florida confirmed that attitude. Millican not only proved there’s plenty of fight in his team, but also in a second team expected to join him in 2008.
Make no bones about, Millican knows how to win. Check the records and you’ll find the Drummonds, Tennessee native spent the six years prior to 2007 dominating the Top Fuel landscape on the IHRA tour. The 41-year-old former sportsman standout won six consecutive IHRA world championships (2001-2006) and eclipsed 'Big Daddy' Don Garlits as the winningest Top Fuel driver in IHRA history with a career total 51 national event victories in the class, over double Garlits total.
Millican made it clear that he could perform under pressure, winning a historic 51-times in 60 final round appearances, stretched over a mere seven year period that included just six full seasons. A stat that is likely overlooked is that Millican missed winning the Top Fuel championship in his rookie season by just eight points in 2000.
So dominating were Millican’s performances during his tenure at the IHRA that he’s still the proud owner of the IHRA Top Fuel elapsed time record set in 2005. He added the 328.14 mph speed record in September of this year with one of his occasional visits to his former stomping grounds.
First it was the tires, and then came the heat-treated chassis. All of these things compounded to have an affect on our performance. We tested well at times and we ran well at times this season. There were flashes of our normal dominating performance, where the car ran really well, but we just weren't able to do it consistently.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
 |
Click to visit our sponsor's website
The fast talking Millican raced occasionally on the NHRA tour during his heyday in IHRA competition. A little known fact is that Millican made his Top Fuel debut driving a Bruce Litton owned car sponsored by Major League Baseball’s Chicago White Sox at the inaugural NHRA Route 66 Nationals outside Chicago in 1998. The one experience was enough to convince him and young team owner Peter Lehman to concentrate on the IHRA tour.
From 2000 to 2006, Millican became an IHRA superstar, still participated with his NHRA rivals when his schedule would allow. Millican has surprisingly appeared in eliminations 71 times in NHRA competition during his Top fuel career but has yet to take home a coveted 'Wally'. He's experienced some exciting moments on the NHRA tour, 'occasionally punctuated' he says, with 'several moments of brilliance'. For example, he advanced to three consecutive NHRA final rounds early in 2004 and just missed taking home his first NHRA national event title.
Many speculate on the reasons Millican finally left the IHRA, where he was the sanctioning bodies' biggest superstar and closest version to John Force (if that's even possible). But it was clear that the fans, the media, fellow competitors, his crew and even Millican himself, were all eager to see what he would be able to accomplish if he focused exclusively on running the full NHRA tour.
The timing to make the switch finally seemed right in late 2006/early 2007. Team owner, Pro Stock car owner and popular driver Kenny Koreksky, who had purchased the team from cunning and youthful Chicago businessman, Peter Lehman, was ready to sell the team to someone that could financially help them reach the next level of performance.
As former crew chief Mike Kloeber put it so succinctly after earning another IHRA Top Fuel championship, "We've made it to the top of the mountain and that's something you can tuck under your cap and look back on someday and be proud of, but we have more to accomplish and higher peaks to conquer."
With the overwhelming and enthusiastic support of Torco Racing Fuels founder and President Evan Knoll, Millican earned the chance to run the entire NHRA schedule in 2007.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
 |
Click to visit our sponsor's website
Running the NHRA tour was a dream come true for Millican and his Tennessee team and they began testing as early as December of 2006 in preparation.
"If you look back," Millican reflected, "we started on a downward slide performance-wise last season. This all leads back to the tire we currently race with today. If you look back, it was from that point that we started sliding off on our performance.
"Yes, we still won the IHRA championship last year (2006)," Millican said. "But our consistency started going away and we started struggling and it's carried all the way through to this season."
Despite three DNQ's and only seven round wins, Millican isn't about to put the blame totally on the new type of Goodyear tires the fuel cars are running.
"There is nothing wrong with the tire," said Millican flatly. "Goodyear works their tail off to make the tires fantastic. It just didn't work with what we did to run the car. That's just part of it."
A combination of things interrupted their usual steady pace.
"It was a little of everything," said Millican. "First it was the tires, and then came the heat-treated chassis. All of these things compounded to have an affect on our performance. We tested well at times and we ran well at times this season. There were flashes of our normal dominating performance, where the car ran really well, but we just weren't able to do it consistently.
"This year I thought we started out looking pretty good," Millican added. "We went out at the second race in Phoenix and ran a 4.479 and the belt came off, and it could have been a 4.45 or better. At the same race we were on another 4.40 run against Whit Bazemore during eliminations and we lost another belt and we were only able to run a low 4.50. We left Phoenix thinking we were on to something.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
 |
Click to visit our sponsor's website
"But it just never came together fully," said Millican. "It was like 'we got it' and that's one thing that we were always able to do. Once Mike (Kloeber) got a hold of something everybody was in trouble. But we just never did get a grasp on it and as this year went on we were obviously struggling. No matter what we did it didn't work consistently.
"Occasionally we would make a huge, giant run. Like this year in Norwalk (a 4.538-seconds run), we were No. 2 qualifier by just five-ten thousandth's of a second and actually we should have been No.1. I shut the car off a little early on the night run and we missed No. 1 by just a little bit. But again… it was a 'nice flash of brilliance'.
"All of these great runs never were accompanied by any win lights," Millican adds in a serious tone. "It makes it frustrating."
"I don't believe in luck, I just don't. I used to be superstitious," admitted Millican, "but I don't believe in luck anymore. I stole a line from the Colt's Coach Tony Dungy, 'when the 'ordinary do extraordinary', that is what makes you a good team'.
"We have a lot of fantastic people working on this team. But we continued struggling this year. We were hurting a lot of parts and pieces."
Millican continued to do his job behind the wheel with some of the best reaction times in the business but it still wasn't winning races.
"I never doubted my own ability. But it's not a one man show. If we're not turning on win lights and earning the crew their bonus checks then it doesn't mean anything.
"There's too much emphasis put on reaction times anyway," said Millican. "So much of that has to do with how the car is put together, how it reacts and how deep the driver stages the front wheel. If you truly want to judge reaction times you just look at the qualifying numbers and not the race day numbers.
"Do I want to be number one at the end of the year (concerning reaction times)? Sure I do … but that's just ego. And ego can be a huge problem for everybody. We all have it and it can cause a lot of problems. The more you deal with your ego and keep it in check, the better for everybody."
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
 |
Click to visit our sponsor's website
As much as Millican is known for being a fast talker, he has also developed the patience to listen to those around him that are capable of offering good advice that's been gained from years of experience.
"I've learned to take advice from people that are doing well and our entire team tries to learn as much as we can from those that have been down this road many more times than us," he said.
We were certainly struggling and not turning on win lights," said Millican, "and then Evan decided to bring veteran Johnny West on after St. Louis."
West proved to be huge addition to the team. The former Phoenix-area Funny Car owner, tuner and driver completely reorganized the team's shop in Drummonds, Tennessee. He didn't stop there, working relentlessly to also organize the team's transporters.
"Johnny was a real gift to this team," said Millican. "He came over to us from J.R. Todd', and had already helped put them in the winner's circle once in 2007. Evan decided that because we were struggling that Mike should take a little break and we should run Johnny's set up for awhile."
Kloeber would be there to assist West, who was also a long time friend, with whatever questions may come up as they made the changes to the tune up. There were no title changes or any animosity, Millican and the team just wanted to start winning rounds again.
"Evan wanted Mike to step back and put Johnny's set up on the car and run it for a while. Unfortunately, that just didn't work out and Mike went on his way. Johnny's been pretty much running the car since the Indy test session in late August."
Millican went on to praise the man he's worked with almost for a decade and who helped make him a legend in Top Fuel.
"I think Mike Kloeber is one of the smartest guys in the business," Millican said with a sense of emotion. "Hands down, he is absolutely brilliant. He's taught me huge amounts about Top Fuel racing; for a guy that's never driven a race car in his entire life, he's taught me a lot. He'll always have a special place in my heart from now on. The things that we did together are pretty incredible when you consider what we started with.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
 |
Click to visit our sponsor's website
"The combination that we had between Peter Lehnman, Mike Kloeber and me; and Mike Hayes, Keelin Hootin, Justin Crosslin, Buggy Johnson, Jamond Haug and Jimmy Rector…it was magical." said Millican. "The main group is still here," said Millican, "some guys have moved on. It's like everything else and it's kind of played its way out." Millican finished by saying, "I will forever and ever be grateful to Mike Kloeber and I still consider him one of my best friends out there,"
Occasionally overzealous fans give Millican and the veteran Knoll Gas crew a hard time because the team's massive IHRA success has failed to translate into much success on the NHRA side of the drag racing coin. Millican gets that question a lot from fans.
"My answer to that is 'their correct'," said Millican, "We have not accomplished the things over here, up to this point, that we're capable of doing.
"If they look at our past performance we've represented ourselves very, very well. This year we've just struggled," said Millican.
"I think if you look at every race team there is, everybody goes through cycles. Obviously," says Millican cautiously, as he searches for the right words, "we got off track on how we run the car somewhere and it's just not been performing the way it should. This year we haven't represented ourselves very well, considering we're a six-time Top Fuel world championship team.
"If you look at our past performance," continued Millican, "I'm really proud of what this team has done in the past. We've reached 11 semifinal rounds and went to three straight final rounds and we represented ourselves very well, on the part time basis in the quickest series in the world."
But the 2007 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series has been quite simply, a struggle, for the always upbeat Tennessee native.
""We have absolutely struggled this year. I'm just very, very proud that Evan Knoll believes in this group and we get the chance to try again next year, and do our very to best to improve," Millican said.
"We're going to carry the Torco Race Fuels name on the side as well as SinFuel Choppers at a few races," said Millican, "Evan Knoll is the greatest ambassador for drag racing there is…he supports more people and more teams and he makes all of this stuff fun. There is nobody in the business that is as generous as him. He wants people to be happy and go out and do what they want to do.
"Our taste is race cars," Millican joked. "And Evan loves race cars. And I thank the Lord everyday I've met him, he keeps us going.
"Evan and I communicate a whole lot," Millican revealed, "usually late at night, which is fine with me, because I'm certainly the night owl. He's always telling me 'this is your barbeque'; it's got to work for the guys. He's always concerned with the people. That just shows you the kind of guy he is."
Millican did reveal the team will stick with the Bill Miller Engineering injector system that they've been using on the Knoll dragster powerplant, along with obtaining a newly-fitted Brad Hadman chassis.
Journeyman mechanic and former championship crew chief Wes Cerny joined Millican's Knoll Gas Dragster team in December, helping to prepare for the 2008 season.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
 |
Click to visit our sponsor's website
Millican proudly proclaims a family atmosphere among his crew.
"We are a family first," explained Millican. "We've grown very close over the years and we know as much about each other as our sisters or brothers. I truly care about each and every one of these guys. I love every one of the guys on this team."
Looking ahead to the 2008 season, Millican spoke with his ever-present optimistic attitude. After all, in addition to West and Cerny, he’s also got former co-crewchief Lance Larsen back in the mix as the tuner for the forthcoming team driven by former jet dragster sensation Jessie Harris.
Harris licensed and tested along with Millican during that recent session in Gainesville, Florida-based test session. He signed off on her license.
"I always look for the bright things that are coming," Millican said. "Things will work out as they're supposed to. If we do the ordinary extraordinary then we'll run well and we'll be the championship-caliber team that I know we are. I have some of the best guys in the business and we're up against the best in the business.
"I'm looking forward to the new season and working with Johnny and Wes and the entire team. They're fantastic and the team is going to continue to grow. We're going to continue to run better and we will not stop until we figure it out.
"Evan Knoll gives us what we need to go run this car," Millican exclaimed, "and we will run this car until we get it figured out and we won't stop until we run with the best in the world."
I would have to sum up the 2007 season as a character building year," said Millican. "We are used to winning, we are winners and we will win again."
| {loadposition feedback} |
