F
By Nate Van Wagnen
ormer IHRA Top Fuel titan Clay Millican appeared on
the cover of DRAG ILLUSTRATED in May of 2017, just weeks
before he would go on to win his first-ever NHRA Top Fuel race.
It was a feat nearly 20 years in the making, and it happened
at his home track, Tennessee’s Bristol Dragway, over Father’s
Day weekend. No longer would the fan-favorite
driver have to answer the question, “So when
are you going to win an NHRA race?”, some-
thing Millican answered nearly every time he
signed autographs at the ropes. Instead, he
would answer a new question: When are you
going to win another one?
Millican and his fans only had to wait until
mid-May of this year, when he drove the Strut-
masters/Parts Plus/Great Clips Top Fuel drag-
ster to the final-round win over former IHRA
rival Terry McMillen at the rain-delayed NHRA
Heartland Nationals in Topeka, Kansas. Then,
Millican and his David “Grubby” Grubnic-led
Stringer Performance team went back-to-back,
winning the Route 66 NHRA Nationals in Jo-
liet, Illinois, just two weeks later.
“It’s still pretty dang crazy that we went back-
to-back,” Millican says. “Nineteen years to win
my first one, less than a year to win my second,
then the third comes the following week. That’s
just nuts.”
Calling from his trip to Virginia Motorsports
Park for the Virginia NHRA Nationals in June,
Millican spoke with DRAG ILLUSTRATED
about the whirlwind season he’s experiencing
so far.
Exactly 20 years after you made your NHRA Top Fuel debut at Route 66
Raceway, how special was it to get your third win in NHRA Top Fuel at
that track, on that weekend?
One of the most special things for me personally was having Peter
Lehman there on Sunday. Peter is who gave me my start. That’s who did
everything to get my career started. He put that Chicago White Sox deal
together for that first car I drove. He’s seen me win a lot of IHRA races as
a team owner, and we attempted to win a lot in NHRA. He was there on
Sunday, and that was pretty dang awesome. Raymond King was there, too.
They both played a big part in me becoming a Top Fuel driver, and it was
awfully special to me to get that win with them at the race.
After winning Topeka, you talked about how no one can call you a one-hit
wonder now. Did you think you could go out and win your third race just
a couple weeks after winning your second?
I have to be really honest: I said it to a lot of people that I was very
confident that we could go out and do it again at Chicago. The confidence
level is extremely high within this group of people right now. It didn’t
surprise me. I don’t want to say I expected it, but I did. I just knew our car
was running well enough to get the job done. We did it. Man, it’s crazy, but
I really felt like we could go back-to-back.
Some people didn’t take you and team owner Doug Stringer seriously
when you launched this Stringer Performance team in 2015 and said you
wanted to build a championship-caliber team. Yet here you are leaving
You’ve now won three races, qualified No. 1 on multiple occasions and
you’re the current elapsed time world record holder. Aside from that
world championship goal, what’s the next goal on your list? Maybe a
certain race you want to win?
I don’t honestly have specific tracks I would like to win at at the mo-
ment. That was checked off the list with my first win. Winning in Tennes-
see, it doesn’t get any bigger than that.
The normal answer would be that I want to win the U.S. Nationals. We
won on Monday at Topeka. There is a lot of talk going on that the next
time we win on Monday will be at Indy. Hopefully we have no more rain
delays and the next time we do race on a Monday is Indy.
Things are just going so well. Right now, I just want to continue this
momentum, get more Wallys and stay in that Top 5 until after Indy, then,
to quote Grubby, “cut it loose” in those last six races. That’s what we want
to do. I would be OK if we didn’t win another race until the Countdown
started, then we win six in a row. I’d be OK with that (laughs).
When you brought on Grubby as the crew chief on the Parts Plus car,
he wasn’t really proven as a crew chief. There were definitely signs
on brilliance at first when the team started up, but now he’s come full
circle as a crew chief capable of qualifying at the top and winning races
consistently. How cool is it to see that transformation?
The credit for that goes to my wife, Donna. When Doug (Stringer)
made the decision that he was going to start the race team and we were
talking crew chiefs, Donna did not hesitate to suggest David Grubnic.
“That David Grubnic guy is a bad dude and that’s who we should get.” I’m
glad we listened to her because she was right – he is a bad dude. He con-
tinues to come into his own. I have a blast working with him. He’s the first
crew chief I’ve ever had that was also a driver. No matter what I do, he’s
pretty much been there, done that. It’s fun for me because he understands
exactly what I’m going through and what I’m feeling. He’s a fantastic guy
and a fantastic crew chief.
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Issue 134
Clay
Q
Millican
& A
Chicago sitting No. 2 in the points. How does that feel?
It’s totally amazing. It’s an incredible feeling being No. 2 in points, es-
pecially as far along into the season as we are. The goal is to be in the Top
5 when NHRA resets the points after Indy. We’re in a good position to do
that. But I’d love to leave Richmond with the points lead. I’ve never led
the points in the NHRA, so that would be fantastic, but not nearly as im-
portant as leading the points after Pomona at the end of the year.