The Mission Foods 2Fast2Tasty Challenge has become a regular staple in the NHRA's Saturday afternoon qualifying sessions. Before a packed house at the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals, it delivered quite the show with Clay Millican scoring a victory in the Top Fuel portion in explosive fashion. 

Millican was joined in the Winner's Circle by Austin Prock (Funny Car), Erica Enders (Pro Stock), and Matt Smith (Pro Stock Motorcycle). Three of the winners, Millican, Prock, and Smith, ended the day as the event's No. 1 qualifiers. 

Millican picked up his first Mission Challenge by stopping Shawn Langdon in the final round on a run where he exploded the supercharger at the finish line but had enough momentum to score the win. 

Millican was first off the line and held on for a 3.839, 302.41 win. Langdon made it close with a 3.861, 310.70. 

Bristol International Dragway. Personally, what I still remember the most is how damp and green the whole facility was. The IHRA Spring Nationals, traditionally held on the first weekend of June, was going to start the next day, and the regular rain in the mountains of east Tennessee was all new to me. As I recall now, the big reason I had made the trip down was to go to a drag racing memorabilia show that Don Gillespie had decided to host, and number of my northeast biddies had told me it was worth making an 8-hor drive for. At that time, I was publishing a little magazine called Quarter Milestones devoted to those racing artifacts, and I had gotten photo credentials as well to try and take some car features for one of the numerous car magazines then offered on the newsstand. 

There are certains in life—death, taxes, and rain at Bristol Dragway.

Officials have adjusted the Final Eliminations schedule in anticipation of the inclement weather for Sunday at the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. 

It has been an up-and-down NHRA season so far for veteran Top Fuel driver Clay Millican.

Millican, however, has been trending upward the last three races, and that trend continued Friday at the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Tenn.

Millican captured the provisional No. 1 qualifying position with his 3.786-second time at 325.06 mph in Q2.

Austin Prock knew driving a Funny Car was going to be a challenge. Driving a Funny Car at Bristol Dragway, he knew, was going to be a whole new ballgame. The temperamental racing surface for the picturesque drag strip carved out of the hill of eastern Tennessee lived up to its reputation during the first day of the 23rd annual Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals.

Prock drove his way to the provisional No. 1 qualifying position with a 3.958 elapsed time at 317.34 miles per hour. 

Joining Prock atop the Friday night leaderboard was Clay Millican (Top Fuel), Erica Enders (Pro Stock) and Matt Smith (Pro Stock Motorcycle). Bristol marks the eighth of 20 events on the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series. 

Prock's best run came in the Q2 session when Funny Car drivers finally broke into the three-second zone. If his Friday night run holds, it will be his sixth of the season. 

When one talks about the legends of drag racing, Larry Carrier's name rarely is mentioned as often as it should be.  

Every drag racing fan in the country should know of Carrier's commitment and accomplishments in the sport.

He built one of drag racing’s more legendary facilities carving a drag strip from between two mountains in the mountains of northeast Tennessee.

He founded drag racing’s second oldest sanctioning body.

He introduced R.J. Reynolds as the first major series sponsor in drag racing.

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Every drag strip has its nuances, and indeed, Bristol Dragway, the palatial drag strip carved out of the mountains of eastern Tennessee, had one that was not always welcomed by drag racers. It had bumps around the transition, coinciding with a spectator tunnel being built underneath the track. 

Headed into this weekend's NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals, race officials have improved the racing surface by putting down new asphalt from the transition to 700 feet and grinding troubled areas to make it smoother beyond that. 

Justin Ashley, who has never finished lower than the semi-finals at the picturesque facility, knows the facility has its unique temperament. 

Make no mistake about it. Pro Modified might have been cultivated elsewhere, but it was born in Bristol, Tenn.

Bristol is where the IHRA headquarters were located in 1989, right on the grounds of its flagship race track, Thunder Valley Dragway, now known today as Bristol Dragway. 

As stated earlier, the groundswell of popularity for cars equipped with Pro Stock style chassis, big engines, and heaping amounts of nitrous oxide were the rage in the Carolinas. However, they were not all late model Camaros, Firebirds, or Thunderbirds in this case. They were often cloaked in a 1955 Chevy body or a ’41 Willys shell.