Clay Millican carried out a Top Fuel duel Friday night at Gateway Motorsports Park with Steve Torrence that might be a preview of how the Countdown will play out in its latter stages.

Millican led the opening qualifying session of the NHRA’s AAA Midwest Nationals at Madison, Ill., with a commanding 3.757-second elapsed time at 326.24 mph on the 1,000-foot course.

In the penultimate run of the evening, Torrence blasted his Capco Contractors Dragster to the top of the order with a 3.717-second E.T., trumping Millican by four-hundredths of a second, at a faster 326.48-mph speed.

However, Millican and his dogged crew chief, Dave Grubnic, were not about to let that provisional No. 1 qualifying position slip away.

“Put it right down the gut, mate,” the Australian-born Grubnic instructed Millican. And Millican obeyed.

He drew a 3.692-second pass (at 329.83 mph) from the Parts Plus / Great Clips / Strutmasters Dragster. It didn’t erase his own 2017 track E.T. record of 3.631 seconds, but it was enough to total, in Millican’s words, “nine consecutive runs where the thing has been just unbelievably quick.”

He said of his McLeansboro, Ill.-headquartered Stringer Performance crew, almost as if he were an outside observer, “What that team’s doing right now is incredible. The cool thing about being at the back of the line is we’re able to tune the car according to what everybody else has done. And that’s all bonus-point-related. The previous run, Grubby said we could’ve gone quicker than we did. Stevie laid down a whopper of a run, and [Grubnic] was in there, changing those knobs. I knew he was doing what he needed to do to get those three points.

“That’s the big value right now. Yes, being No. 1 qualifier is awesome. But chances are, on Friday night if you get the three points, you’re the No. 1 qualifier. We made 11 points last week [at the Reading, Pa., kickoff to the Countdown]. We certainly want to try to do that again. We’d rather have 12,” Millican said. “We’ve got some ground to make up on Stevie [the points leader], and bonus points is how we do it. We only made one on him right then, but one point could be the difference in the championship.”

Millican said, “I still like the track prep. Granted, maybe we could have gone quicker than that under the previous track-prep conditions. But I like it. The racing is as close as it’s ever been.

“We’ve just got a great race car and really great group of guys putting the thing together,” he said. “And man, it's fun to drive. It really is. I’ve got the ultimate roller coaster right now – when you stomp on the gas, it goes to the finish line and it goes really, really fast. So it’s a lot of fun, a lot of fun.” He said he wants to “enjoy the rocket-ship ride that it is right now.”

Pressure? Not for Millican, he said. “The only pressure on me is not leave before the tree is activated, hit a cone, or run into the wall. Qualifying for me is purely fun.”

Backing up Steve Torrence was dad Billy Torrence at 3.735,  328.06. Part-time racer / full-on competitor and two-time winner Blake Alexander was fourth overnight, with Leah Pritchett fifth. Tony Schumacher – the driver with whom Millican entered this event tied for second in the standings – sits in sixth place for now, with two more sessions scheduled for Saturday to set the fields for Sunday’s eliminations.

Entered but not on the track in either Friday session were Chris Karamesines, Jim Maroney, and Bill Litton. Lex Joon is 17th and unqualified.