PHOTO : NHRA / NATIONAL DRAGSTER |
went to a company picnic at Fel-Pro , which is in Skokie , Illinois , in my little dually and trailer , unloaded my dragster and we started it , revved the motor up – all that kind of stuff . From there I met a man ( Peter Lehman ) whose father was the president of Fel-Pro . He actually came out to a race in Cordova that weekend , just for a little while . Fast forward to the end of the year , I got a call from Raymond asking , “ Do you remember that kid you met whose dad is my boss ?” I ’ m like , “ Not really , but kinda .” “ Well , Peter wants to come to Darlington with you at the end of the season . He ’ s writing a nonfiction story for a college class he ’ s taking at Northwestern University .” So I called Peter , first time I ’ d talked to him on the phone , and said , “ You probably want to fly into Charlotte and I ’ ll pick you up .” He said , “ Nope , I want to experience the whole process . I want to experience everything you go through .”
I picked him up after I got off work on the night shift at the Kroger food warehouse . It was my wife , my friend and his dually that I had borrowed since mine had been broken into that week , and Peter and me . I drove the entire way to Darlington , South Carolina – a pretty long ride from the Memphis area . We get there and he ’ s making little notes the whole time . Basically he was not having a clue what was going on . He was not a race car kind of person at all . He basically asked ,
|
Keep on Rollin ’
Since making his Top Fuel debut in 1998 , Clay Millican and his various team owners and supporters have worked hard to keep the former Kroger warehouse forklift operator on the nitro scene . He ’ s worked through sponsorship woes and team changes to find himself at the helm of Doug Stringer ’ s championship-contending Parts Plus / Great Clips Top Fuel dragster .
“ Why do you do this ? You obviously spend every dollar you have to go racing . Why ?” My answer was , “ Because I want to drive a Top Fuel car .”
Right time , right place ; whatever you want to call it , I won my first national event that weekend with Peter there . I joke with him all the time that I hooked him . He also experienced what Top Fuel cars were that weekend . We became very good friends . Then he wrote for another class a business plan for how to go racing . Well , he put this plan into effect and signed a one-race sponsorship with the Chicago White Sox , and off to Florida I went with Peter and his family and my wife . We went and I got my license through Paul Smith . Literally in less than a week I was at Route 66 Raceway . I was the very first Top Fuel
|
car to ever pull into the racetrack there at an NHRA national event . I did my infamous “ reverse burnout ” on that first run and was ready to go home to Drummonds ( Tennessee ), go back to Kroger and never be thought of again . But it ’ s obviously turned out very well .
You ’ re well-known for your success in the IHRA , but most people don ’ t realize you started your Top Fuel career at an NHRA race . What was the reasoning for focusing on IHRA competition after that first start in the NHRA ?
That was something that Peter wanted to do . At that point , IHRA had a great program . They still weren ’ t as big as NHRA , obviously , but they had a very competitive Top Fuel field . The reason Peter wanted to do that was they ran 10-12 races in a season . With the budget we had , that was the place to go for a couple reasons . One , we had enough budget to run those races competitively . Two , it was a training ground for a very , very inexperienced group of people , including myself . The only experience we really had was Mike Kloeber . I was a racer . I knew how to stage and all that kind of stuff , but I knew nothing about Top Fuel cars . Everybody who worked on the car was just friends of mine . We did it for essentially nothing , but that was what we had to do .
Peter chose to do the IHRA series the first year basically to teach us what we needed to do , how
|
May 2017 |
DragIllustrated . com | Drag Illustrated | 75 |