Ninth in the NHRA Top Fuel points, the sweetest words Terry McMillen has heard in his drag racing career.

Two races into the 2016 season and the driver of the Xtermigator Top Fuel dragster has two round wins, one-third of the way towards tying last year's win total. Last year it took him seven races to win a round in competition. The year before it took eight.

McMillen braced for the worst headed into last weekend's CARQUEST NHRA Nationals considering last season's round win was followed by a DNQ, and a first round loss in the year's prior.

"I don’t even know what to prepare for, all I know is we’re entirely staying focused, and we know that we’ve got to continue to be better and work harder," said McMillen, addressing the history.  

"I think what we don’t have is the technical stuff to test with, but if these wins set a trend for the rest of the year, then it’s going to be a great year.  The downside is that we’ve always found if we have a good race or a good day then the next race we don’t qualify or something like that. Those are the things that probably scare me the most because you get on this rollercoaster, and you’re at the top, and you’re coming down, and it’s looking good. Then all of a sudden it just goes bad and into the toilet then you can’t do anything right."

There's nothing in the toilet when you take out the winningest Top Fuel driver ever in Tony Schumacher, and follow up the victory by taking out the then point leader Steve Torrence.

"The biggest thing right now is to stay focused and let that happen and to keep digging until we get it right," McMillen said. "We’re coming out here to lay everything on the table and do the absolute best we can."

Credit tuner Rob Wendland for helping to create an atmosphere of confidence. And in gaining confidence, McMillen feels the pressure even more to perform actions sometimes outside of his control.

"We have a lot of great marketing partners and certainly more fans than I ever dreamed possible following us and supporting us," McMillen said. "It’s overwhelming when you really stop to think about all of that.  I don’t want to let them down.  I don’t want to let the team down.  It’s not like we aren’t spending all the time we can working on the car, I mean we’re still working 20-hour days.  

"My guys get very little time off, and we’re trying to do everything that we can.  The struggle with single car teams is that you have to learn by hard knocks, or you don’t have the equipment to dyno this or dyno that.  We have to go out there and learn."

McMillen is driving a new dragster built by Don Schumacher Racing, a car he boldly proclaims as the nicest he's ever driven.

"We’re starting to weed our way through some areas that I think we struggled in," said McMillen. "Winning one round and then going five races and not winning or not even qualifying sometimes is disheartening when you spend as much time and effort as all these guys put in to make that happen.  I certainly want to go out there and deliver that; we all do.  We’re lining ourselves up to do that, and I think we’re probably in the best position that we’ve been in -- in a long time."  

The stats don't lie either.

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