CLAY MILLICAN – ENTERING NEW TERRITORY

Laid back but competitively driven, Clay Millican makes no pretenses about who is and where he’s from.

“I’m a river rat, not a hillbilly,” the affable, 41-year-old Tennessean said without hesitation.

Millican and his family live only a few miles from the Mississippi River, just north of Memphis. It’s a comfortable spot for someone who prefers a slower pace at home and an even business keel at his nearby garage.

But on selected weekends, the tempo shoots up, and Millican must do his magic behind the wheel of his Top Fuel dragster.

Millican might hail from an ordinary place, but he is forever looking to achieve big things on the national stage.

Six-times a world champion, The NHRA is his new stomping ground…

That dream has placed the former bracket racer in faster, more intense company these days.

Before Millican jumped to the NHRA ranks this season, he basically beat up the competition in drag racing’s other league. Millican, however, makes no apologies for that.

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On the IHRA scene, few were quicker and more dominant than Millican. He set national records while winning six series championships and 50 national events in 59 final-round appearances under crew chief Mike Kloeber.

But a series of ownership changes and new sponsorship deals have steered Millican and Kloeber on a new path – a chance to compete full-time in the NHRA Powerade Drag Racing Series. This season he hopes to make some noise in the Knoll-Gas Motorsports/Torco Racing Fuels entry for new owner Evan Knoll.

Never one to back away from a challenge, Millican welcomed the change and the chance to compete in the more lucrative, highly exposed NHRA. The fact that his longtime crew remained intact through all the changes only boosts Millican’s confidence.

“Did I want to give it a shot? Absolutely,” said Millican, a highly decorated national sportsman racer who still is searching for the elusive first Wally. He has three runner-up finishes in 64 NHRA national events. “I wanted to race Larry Dixon every week and see how we could do. We wanted that opportunity.

“Everyone on this team wanted to make a run at the NHRA championship. It was a group decision,” Millican said. “Evan wanted to give us a chance to see what how we can do.”

Knoll bought the Top Fuel team from Kenny Koretsky’s KPK Motorsports and immediately gave the popular Millican a chance to compete in all 23 NHRA tour stops this year. The team also will honor some IHRA events on open weekends. The car Millican drives is a tribute to Knoll’s oldest daughter Betsy.

It was Koretsky who had bought the team from Peter Lehman, who helped form Millican’s team back in 1999. Koretsky purchased the team from Lehman early in the 2005 season, and the team won its last two IHRA championships under his ownership.

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Now with Knoll writing the checks, Millican and his crew have a full season to prove themselves against the likes of Schumacher, Bernstein and Kalitta.

“I think we are going to answer one of those long asked questions,” Knoll, owner of Torco Race Fuels, said. “All we’ve heard is how people have wondered what Clay would do against the NHRA guys on a full-time basis. Now we will find out.”

So far, it’s been a struggle.

Bitten by mechanical woes, Millican failed to qualify for two shows already this season. He struck lightning in Phoenix, qualifying as high as third on the strength of a wicked career-best 4.479-second lap, and reaching the second round. But at rain-hampered Houston, he followed a 10th-place qualifying effort with a first-round collapse.

“I keep going back to what (fellow Top Fuel driver) Whit Bazemore said at the track the other day,” Millican said. “He said, ‘your car has been like a light switch. It’s either on or off.’

“We’ve struggled, but we’re making progress,” Millican said. “Our guys are winners. This is not a group of guys that doesn’t know what it’s like to win. They’ve won and they will win again.”

Millican doesn’t regret stepping into the NHRA cauldron. The competition, he says, is incredibly tough, but so too was the heat he felt from IHRA opposition.

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“From my standpoint, it’s not any different,” said Millican, comparing the Top Fuel divisions. “I’m driving for the same people. Sure, we’re racing at different tracks and the NHRA obviously is a bigger organization, with bigger crowds and a TV deal. But they do a great job in both sanctioning bodies.

“I’m not going to knock one over the other,” he said. “I love to race either way. I have a great time racing, no matter where I’m at. There are some differences, but I love them both.”

Perhaps the biggest difference is accommodating a larger inventory for the team to go the distance during the course of the NHRA schedule. But perhaps the biggest comfort is knowing your crew, especially a familiar crew chief, will be there for the long haul.

“I don’t know of too many crew chiefs who have been together with the same driver for as long as Mike and I have,” Millican said. “Mike and I are just a good mix. We’re a lot different from each other. Mike gets pretty intense, and he’s very, very focused on the task at hand. He will quickly let you know if you don’t get it done, and that’s what a crew chief needs to do.

“I am, on the other hand, more laid back. I probably don’t push things harder than what they need to be – until, of course, when I get my helmet on.

“Hey, I’m always ready to race. I do love racing.”

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CLAY MILLICAN – ENTERING NEW TERRITORY