CLAY MILLICAN: A NEWFOUND APPRECIATION
The high-energy Top Fuel driver from Drummonds, Tenn., a small-town located on the outskirts of Memphis, Tenn., admits to having a new lease on his driving career.
Months ago, he couldn’t say that.
Blame it on a pair of near-midnight phone calls. The first was to inform the driver of Evan Knoll’s Top Fuel dragster that he’d be a paid sideline player in 2008.
The second was to tell him he was relegated to the unemployment line through no fault of his own.
He’s been down a road of uncertainty; now the picture has never been clearer …
Clay Millican just can’t stop smiling these days.
Months ago, he couldn’t say that.
Blame it on a pair of near-midnight phone calls. The first was to inform the driver of Evan Knoll’s Top Fuel dragster that he’d be a paid sideline player in 2008.
The second was to tell him he was relegated to the unemployment line through no fault of his own.
The former call he understood because, in his words, “If a company couldn’t support their racing, they didn’t need to be out there. Just take some time off until it could.”
The latter communication came out of the blue. The six-time IHRA Top Fuel champion was one of those innocent victims when Evan Knoll’s business and sponsorship empire collapsed like a house of cards.
Millican had prepared himself for a year of no driving. He had no reason to doubt his team owner because in the past their assurances had always panned out. This time was totally different.
I certainly have a new appreciation for driving a race car. I thought honestly that everything I had worked for was gone. I did more than I ever thought I’d do or accomplish. I won six world championships and thanks to Mark Pickens and his family, they saw something substantial enough to keep everything going.
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Donna didn’t even want to quit her job, which Millican confided, provided a security blanket of support for his racing endeavors and also covered the family’s health insurance. She only did so with the assurances of Knoll’s assigns that everything was secure.
This decision was made just a month before the word came down to suspend all Torco sponsorships.
Don’t think the parents were the only ones to suffer. The Millican’s, in anticipation of a year off from racing, purchased a truck and trailer, amid the assurances their race team would return stronger than ever in 2009, to support their youngest of two sons, Dalton, in his motocross championship pursuit.
The second phone call came just as Millican had finished loading the new trailer for a race that weekend.
Even then, Millican regretfully admits, the phone call never came from Knoll himself. He hasn’t spoken to his former team owner since February.
“Not only was my racing season over at that point, so was Dalton’s,” Millican added.
The words from the other end of that phone call still provides a haunting memory, “We’re out of money, you’ll have to find another way to go racing.”
Millican believed his dream had finally run its course. For the first time since he accepted Peter Lehman’s dream opportunity in 2000, he was faced with the reality of entering the non-racing workforce.
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“I never asked a question and I still haven’t to this day as to what went wrong,” Millican admitted. “I knew I need to figure out what I needed to do. Losing every bit of income we had was the toughest for us.”
A heartbroken Millican reluctantly called at the late hour to convey the bad news to two of his closest friends, Memphis businessmen Mark Pickens, owner of Motorvation fuel injection products and Raymond King of T.C.I. automatic transmissions fame. Both had been supporters of Millican’s racing endeavors over the last few years.
Both Pickens and King told Millican he didn’t have a thing to worry about.
Millican didn’t sleep soundly on those assurances.
Knowing the resolve of Pickens and King, Millican should have.
“When you don’t have a paycheck coming in, that’s a tough pill to swallow and you can just go right back to sleep,” Millican admitted. “I didn’t have anything coming in to pay the bills.”
Again, they reassured him he had no worries.
The three of them met in the morning to ponder a game plan to purchase the team’s assets, many of which were housed in an uncompleted shop which was procured on the goodness of Millican’s name in the community. No lease was ever signed leading to a tense situation.
There was another variable in the mix that Millican hadn’t accounted for.
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Just months earlier, he had committed to be part of a visit to the military troops serving in Iraq sponsored by General Motors.
The fact Millican is a homebody and wears out his cell phone while away racing was one thing that worried him about the isolation of the 12-day trip. The uncertainty of his family’s financial future struck another nerve.
Something wouldn’t let me back out of the commitment.
“Those 12 days over there definitely changed the way I look at life,” Millican said. “I’ve always supported our military but that respect just increased by 100 times. The experience was life changing for me.”
While Millican was supporting the military, Pickens had procured the final sale of the equipment. Millican would return home to a Top Fuel team needing his involvement.
Not only did Millican and his crew rush back to work to complete an unfinished shop, but also had purchased two dragsters deemed illegal by the new NHRA standards. They were quickly brought up to standard by chassis builder Brad Hadman who flew out to the team’s new shop to perform the necessary back-half updates.
Bear in mind this work was completed in a little over 90 days after Millican made the after midnight call to Pickens.
“We fired the car up and I was like a giddy little kid at Christmas time,” Millican added.
Millican hadn’t sat in a dragster since March. Even though he saw them every day in the shop, he never sat in one. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“I certainly have a new appreciation for driving a race car,” Millican said. “I thought honestly that everything I had worked for was gone. I did more than I ever thought I’d do or accomplish. I won six world championships and thanks to Mark Pickens and his family, they saw something substantial enough to keep everything going.”
Pickens had planned to field the car beginning in Indy and through the balance of the season.
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“We had just gotten the car fired, in the parking lot of our new shop, when Kenny Koretsky called,” Millican said. “He wanted to know how far we were from being ready and I let him know we’d just started the car for the first time. He told us that he wanted us to come out and race at Reading.”
They not only made the race in Reading but Millican drove the dragster to the semis.
The weekend was a magical one for Millican who shared his newfound love with tuner Lance Larsen in his own unique way.
“I made my first run and I came back to the pits, looked at Lance and said, that was really faaaaaaassssst,” Millican said, accentuating his southern drawl. “He looked at me like I had four eyeballs. He asked me what I was talking about and I repeated myself and told him they were fast. He just shook his head and went back to work on the computer.
“I grabbed his attention and said, ‘I just love how fast these cars go.”
“He just wanted me to go away because I was all jacked up on Mt. Dew. He didn’t realize it but there comes a time in every nitro racer’s life when they realize just how lucky they are and that run was mine.”
Millican likened the experience of backing up from the first return burnout to his 1998 debut.
“It was like the Chicago White Sox car all over again with Peter Lehman giving me my break,” Millican added.
This time the guarantor was different.
“Mark and I had been friends for a while and he became a sponsor on the car,” Millican continued. “He extended the warm opportunity to keep me out here … him and his wife Lauren did … and it felt like we had always been together. It was meant to be and you know in your heart when things are meant to be.
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Millican will quickly tell you that had it not have been for the help offered by Koretsky, Mike Ashley’s Lend America and all of his long time associate sponsors they wouldn’t have progressed as quickly.
A quick progression into a positive situation has yielded tell-tale results for the MPE team and Millican.
“I am just having the time of my life,” Millican said. “This is so refreshing that I’ve developed a whole new burst of energy.”
A burst of energy for the middle aged man who could serve as the poster child for Ritalin?
“Driving a dragster never got old for me, but in a situation like we experienced earlier in the year, I just had every ounce of wind taken out of my sales,” Millican added. “I was on empty. I wasn’t so jacked up to go put together sponsorship packages and deals.
“All of that is back again. The experience of losing everything and then gaining it back has given me a new outlook on everything. Racing is so much different now. The reason I do this is because I love going fast and doing as my momma says – showing out. That Friday in Reading I got to show out in front of a big crowd. I got the old fired up me coming out again.”
He’s also got that newfound appreciation.
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