to become competitive and as it turned out, how
to function under pressure trying to win a cham-
pionship even in our first year. It was a learning
experience for everyone.
When the dot-com company that was sponsor-
ing us went dot-bomb, we really thought we were
done. But Peter put together a deal with Wer-
ner Enterprises for our second season. Werner
was doing a lot of business with Clear Channel,
who owned the IHRA series. They chose to race
the IHRA series. That’s where we were paid to
race. Race teams go where their sponsors pay
them to go.
I love the IHRA. I’m so proud of everything we
did. We were paid to race there and that’s where
we raced and I loved it. We did very well with
them. We did do a few NHRA races, but our focus
certainly was the IHRA. The success we had was
unbelievable. My dream was always just to drive
one of these things. I never once thought about
winning a race, let alone fifty-something of them.
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I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Dream Team
Millican is quick to sing the praises of the
team that carried him to 52 IHRA nation-
al-event wins and six consecutive IHRA Top
Fuel world championships. Led by team
owner Peter Lehman and crew chief Mike
Kloeber, the Werner Enterprises team was
able to go well over a whole season with-
out losing before the final round. Millican’s
IHRA achievements are untouchable.
Certainly never six world championships. Six in
a row was just crazy. We had a young kid on the
team who went a whole season – actually around
a year and a half – without going to the track
and not going to the final round. It was just not
normal. What that team did was magical. A lot of
people say, “Ah, well, it was the IHRA.” Well guess
what? It doesn’t matter if you’re racing in the
parking lot or foot-racing at high school; sooner
or later you’re going to twist your ankle or stum-
ble somewhere. This team stuck together and
went through six seasons of world-championship
winning. Very proud of that whole group. It was
an incredible run. The team was awesome and it
was a pretty tough combination, that’s for sure.
Many people also don’t realize you ran part-
time NHRA campaigns during those IHRA
years too. How did your NHRA campaigns
compare to your IHRA racing?
We had good runs in the NHRA. People kind
of forget that in 2004 we did 10 NHRA races. We
went to three consecutive final rounds out of the
10 races we sporadically put in our schedule. We
didn’t win any of the three, but there were full-
time teams that didn’t go to three straight finals.
I honestly believe, had our sponsors wanted us to
race NHRA full-time, that we would have won
races. We had a limited number of opportunities
but we did very well when we showed up.
Issue 121
Clay
Millican