It’s not very often you hear of a driver accidentally falling into success.

But that is exactly what happened to Clay Millican Saturday afternoon at Heartland Motorsports Park as the driver of the Parts Plus/Great Clips/Strutmaster Top Fuel machine quite literally lucked into the No. 1 spot and held that position for his fourth green hat of the season and second in a row at the 30th annual Menards NHRA Heartland Nationals presented by Minties.

Sitting 16th on the ladder entering the third qualifying session of the weekend and just barely holding onto a spot in the field, Millican was given a couple of scenarios for what would happen next. If he got bumped out of the field, he could expect to run a conservative number to try and stay alive for Q4. If he remained in 16th, well, it was time to hold on.

The problem is, not even crew chief and tuner David Grubnic could have prepared for what happened next.

“Grubby gave me a couple of scenarios. We were very early in the session and he said if Audrey (Worm) bumps us out, I have scenario one and that is what I like to refer to as the A/Fuel car tuneup,” Millican said. “If she has trouble, then I am going to step it up some. And step it up was probably a 77 or 78. So I have to admit that when I drove by the scoreboard, I did a double-take. I looked up and said that is no 78. That is a 73.”

And he wasn’t mistaken.

Millican rocketed from last to first during qualifying session number three with a head-turning 3.739-second pass at 331.12 mph and held that spot for his fourth top qualifier award of the season, blasting past Friday top qualifier Steve Torrence who dropped a spot to second with a 3.747 at 328.30 mph. Billy Torrence qualified third with a 3.762 at 331.36 mph, while Tony Schumacher (3.771) and Leah Pritchett (3.776) round out the top five.

While it was certainly an impressive lap, it was a pass that, quite honestly, wasn’t even supposed to happen.

“I was told that Grubby admitted on the starting line that that was not supposed to happen,” Millican said. “Sometimes these things will give you a run like that and you are like, yeah, that wasn’t supposed to happen. For us, we are all excited because, for one thing, we went from being the number 16 qualifier to number one, which was awesome. But for Grubby, he was not happy with that.

“Whenever the car does something he can’t explain, he doesn’t like it. He will spend weeks figuring out why it did that. But he will also take that and use it to his advantage. Every once in a while something will happen that you didn’t really expect and typically it is a bad result, but sometimes it is a good result. We had no malfunctions and for the car to go 73, I am still giddy. That, to me, was a very, very impressive run under the conditions.”

With that pass, Millican continues to show why his team is one of the best in the business right now, as Millican earned his category-best fourth green hat of the season.

“It is amazing how good David Grubnic is. It is really cool when you know you have the quickest car out there and, right now, we have the quickest car on the planet,” Millican said. “Sundays have been okay for us this year. I think we are fourth in points and the points are extremely tight. We just have to keep going rounds. We have to go four in a row. In one race. It has just been a lot of fun.”

Millican will face Terry Totten in round one on Sunday as he seeks his second career victory.

But, more importantly for the rest of the field, Millican will start on top of the ladder, instead of facing some of the better cars early on Sunday had he stayed in the bottom half of the field.

“We pulled up in the staging lanes in Q4 and the guys that work on Steve Torrence’s car were all like, ‘we are so glad you ran good a while ago.’ And I was like, ‘but we knocked you out of the top spot.’ They said they didn’t care, they know it is going to be cold tomorrow and they did not want to run us first round,” Millican said with a laugh. “That is a big compliment from the team that has won the majority of races this year.

“And if it is cool tomorrow, I like our chances. If we can repeat the run we made when it was hot today, I like our chances for that too.”