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From
Nuisance to Notable That
boy!
The citizens of
Drummonds, Tennessee, used to cringe or shake their heads at young wag
Clay Millican. He was a respectful boy, slicing the Starling Bologna
behind the meat counter at the B & M Grocery on Richardson Landing
Road or carrying groceries out for folks. But oh, when he got behind the
wheel of a car, he just had more fun disturbing the peace. Little did the
neighbors know, but that was homework for Millican, who grew up to win
five consecutive International Hot Rod Association Top Fuel championships.
All those wild rides around the Tipton County countryside prepared him for
the 8,000-horsepower blasts he would make in both IHRA and National Hot
Rod Association competition. Who knew that someday he would zip through
the length of more than four football fields in less than five seconds at
more than 330 miles an hour as a professional drag racer? All the
neighbors knew was that Clay Millican liked to make noise. "In a small
town, everybody knows everything," Millican said. "Growin' up, I
could not do anything without somebody calling the store and telling mama
or daddy, 'Clay was out squealin' tires' or whatever. I never got into any
trouble, other than loud car stuff." a
d v e r t i s e m e n t Now he's the
world ambassador for Drummonds, Tennessee, and the neighbors are proud
that he lives 600 feet away from the country store that was his
second-story home as a youngster. They brag about his championship team
being based in nearby Atoka, Tenn, about five miles to the east.
"Now, some
of those people say, 'Man, you have no idea how much you irritated us. Now
we get to watch you on TV doing it.' It's kind of cool," Millican
said. "They probably thought, 'This guy is nuts.' Now they know
I'm nuts." Millican said he
understands what grief his rubber-laying antics must have brought his
parents, Martha and Jimmie. "I told my mother recently, 'I cannot
believe what a huge pain in the butt I was," he said. "I now see
it. It took me this long." Blame it
on Raymond How responsible
he was -- he could have blamed it on Raymond. Some days it's
all Raymond King's fault. That used to be the joke. King, the gasket guru
who's director of marketing for Federal-Mogul/Fel-Pro, was responsible for
Millican getting his first chance to drive professionally.
King was
vice-president of TCI -- Torque Converter Incorporated, a sponsor for many
sportsman-level racers. Felpro, based in Skokie, Illinois, bought TCI and
hired King right away. That business acquisition led to Millican's move
from NHRA's Super Comp class and IHRA's now-defunct Modified class
("a poor man's Comp Eliminator," as he described it) to drag
racing's elite Top Fuel dragsters. "They had
an Employee Day," Millican said. "I carried my car up there,
started it up, revved the motor up." And that's when the Fel-Pro
owner's son, Peter Lehman, saw that he and Millican could become way more
than just a local bracket racer. He knew they could become successful
business partners. It wasn't just the way Millican fired up the race car.
It was the way he fired up the employees standing around watching the
spectacle.
Peter Lehman,
educated in a Connecticut prep boarding school, made Millican the subject
of one of his college term papers at prestigious Northwestern University
in Evanston, Illinois. The talkative
Tennesseean said he thinks Lehman's first impression was "I can't
believe this country bumpkin!" a
d v e r t i s e m e n t But they learned
to appreciate each other's culture as they won four championships and were
well on their way to a fifth before Lehman sold the team in early June to
Pro Stock racer and Eastern Pennsylvania businessman Kenny Koretsky.
Millican and crew chief Mike Kloeber, the architect of these series titles
and IHRA records, are included in Koretsky's ownership group.
Millican took
Lehman to his first drag race, at Darlington, South Carolina. "He
never went to a race before he went with me," Millican said. "I
was in a pick-up truck and now here we are in an 18-wheeler. It wasn't
that many years ago, either. It was 1997 when we met each other. "It was a
learning experience for both of us," Millican said. "He never
had eaten chicken and dumplings, Peter hadn't. So I introduced him to
chicken and dumplings, and he told me what that extra fork was for at the
dinner table. We were raised on opposite sides of the spectrum. There's
nothing wrong with either one -- we were just raised different. He's a
city boy. He lives downtown. I don't want to live downtown -- except
downtown Drummonds, with our no stop lights and no nothin'." When Lehman
announced the sale, he said he hadn't planned to make the race team a
fulltime venture and that he was planning to establish an asset-management
company. "He's an
amazing guy," Millican said. "I don't know how he knows so much
so young. I think about race cars all the time. He thinks about business.
Maybe that's what it is." But, Millican
said of the Werner Enterprises Dragster, "This is what feeds us all.
It takes care of us, so we have to make sure it keeps going."
Koretsky
takes reins Koretsky made it
clear at Englishtown, New Jersey, when he spoke publicly for the first
time about his newest acquisition, that he would keep the Kloeber-led team
intact. "This is
one of the best teams in Top Fuel," Koretsky said, adding that he
signed Millican and Kloeber to five-year contract extensions. "Clay
and Mike are two of the best in the business. They are winners, hard
workers and nice guys. I wanted them to know their future is secure." Said Millican,
"I'm happy about it. I've never had a long-term contract. With Peter,
we both knew that as long as he was doing this that I was going to drive
his car, and Kenny was the same way. Kenny said this was security for both
of us. It is a good feeling to know that I'm going to be able to do this
for that amount of time, and it's a relief. It's nice to know all I have
to think about is driving the car." That's not all
that much of a change for Millican. The 39-year-old father of two
said, "I don't do nothin' but drag race. I really don't. This is all
I do. You know what I was doing New Year's Eve? I was power-washing the
floor at the shop. Me and Lance (team manager Lance Larsen) both, New
Year's Eve and New Year's Day. We tested at Bradenton the week before
Christmas.
"If I
play," Millican said, "I work on my dragster. I still have a
car. I bracket race now and again, go to the local test-and-tune and just
make laps." He has little
time for that, for when he hasn't been defending his IHRA championship,
he's challenging the NHRA frontrunners, putting thousands and thousands of
miles on the team hauler each year. He said he goes
wherever his team owner and sponsor wants him to race. "As long as I
get to drive a race car," he said, "I'm a happy camper. I
really, really am." Millican never
loses that ear-to-ear grin he's so famous for, and it surely will be
flashing in 2006. Koretsky said, "Our ultimate goal is to have this
team run all 23 NHRA races, starting next year, but that's a call that
will be made by the sponsors." That's all right
by Millican, who said after winning in August at Norwalk, Ohio, "I'm
really going to get killed for saying this, but I would love to see a
36-race schedule. Why not? The chances of that ever happening are slim to
none. But I'm definitely happy with all these extra races we're doing. The
more races we run, the happier I am." a
d v e r t i s e m e n t He said his
"biggest enjoyment is driving that car. It's a lot of work, a lot of
travel, but I get to drive the car."
Kloeber didn't
advocate a 36-race schedule, but he, too, said the more races the merrier.
"I look at it as more chances we get to win an NHRA race," the
crew chief said. "With the extra races, we should have a better
chance of winning now than we've ever have had in the past. With Kenny
owning the team we are going to have additional resources that we haven't
had in the past. Kenny's going to buy us more parts and better parts so
that when we get to the NHRA races, it will make it as important to win an
NHRA race as it is for us to win IHRA races. "Werner
provides us the equipment and the resources we need to be a dominant car
in the IHRA and Werner encourages us to stay current and come and run some
NHRA races and pays for us to do that," Kloeber said. "No matter
what we do at an NHRA race, we have to make sure that when we get to an
IHRA race, we are fully focused and fully prepared. In IHRA, we've got to
do a good job for Werner Enterprises at every single IHRA race."
IHRA or
NHRA? Millican said he
doesn't have any trouble alternating between IHRA and its rival
sanctioning body. "I don't
change who I am. I am me, and I drive a race car," he said. "I'm
still doing the same thing I've been doing for 15 years. Just now I'm
driving a Top Fuel car -- and I'm not down there [at the top end], putting
the brakes on, trying to keep from breaking out [running quicker than his
dial-in]. "It's the
same guys with me and the same car. Same everything," he said.
"For us, we're just in a different city, a different race
track."
He said the
ambience at IHRA tracks is different than at NHRA facilities. "It's a
lot different, but I don't have to deal with it. Mike does." Millican
said. "Both sanctioning bodies have really neat things about
them." Getting in the
race car -- at any track -- is what excites Millican. Whether it's an IHRA
race or an NHRA event, he said he is grateful that he has the chance every
day to drive a Top Fuel dragster for a living. "I'm still
getting to live out a dream. It's still a dream, even though it's a lot of
work, a lot of hours. I still love every minute of it," Millican
said. "I love the G-forces and the feel of all that. With all the
crazy stuff going on, I do appreciate when I get in there and put the
helmet on and everything goes away for four and a half seconds." That includes
any threats by the competition. And off the track, it includes
threats to his family. The drag-racing world was stunned Oct. 8, 2003, to
learn that Clay Millican's mother, Martha, was shot in the head during an
attempted robbery at the family store -- and equally astounded that that
she not only survived but miraculously suffered no adverse effects.
What’s
in store for the store? "I
appreciate everything that ever has happened," Millican said.
"Mama being shot should be a terrible thing, but . . . there is
good in everything that happens, some way. "It let us
know how much the community does count on the little store, too. It is
like the community cornerstone. Mama's like the local therapist. She's
Martha -- but she doesn't have Martha Stewart's insider connections in the
stock trade," he said. "And I found out I could count on a lot
of people I didn't know I could count on. That goes for my whole family.
It's kind of cool to know that people care. They do. We had some decisions
to make, as far as what my parents should do or not do with the store.
They were talking about selling it." He said,
"We were always pretty sure that I didn't want to run it. My sisters
didn't want to run it. That kind of finished that decision. So we have a
store for sale in Drummonds, Tennessee." The intimate
little gathering place that has provided groceries and fed the soul of the
community -- the store that, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal,
offered Black Draught Laxative, Williams Old Fashioned shaving mugs, Magic
Brand Shaving Powder, neck bones, rag bologna, and souse along with all
the usual grocery items -- will change hands. Clay Millican's team
ownership has changed hands. And life goes on in Drummonds, Tennessee, and
in the drag-racing world. And Millican
still turns to his race car for solace and inspiration. "There's no
calmer place on Earth than sitting in a car when it's going down the race
track and everything's going good -- or even if it's not and you're just
sitting in there, making it go without thinking. It's like snow falling
off a leaf -- it just happens. Clay Millican's
career didn't just happen. It took years of learning, years of focus, and
years of blending the right mix of people to make the operation work the
way it should work. And no small element in the successful equation has
been the passion of a young boy who lived over the grocery store and had a
dream -- and a way of making the neighbors crazy. |
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© Competitionplus 2005
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