For Clay Millican and his tightly knit Tennessee-based Top Fuel team,
his first full season competing on the 23-race NHRA POWERade Drag
Racing Series didn't go quite as well as he and car owner Evan Knoll
had anticipated.

In fact, it’s a season that he’s already described as fully in the rear
view mirror. A recent positive test session in Gainesville, Florida
confirmed that attitude. Millican not only proved there’s plenty of
fight in his team, but also in a second team expected to join him in
2008.

Make no bones about, Millican knows how to win. Check the records and
you’ll find the Drummonds, Tennessee native spent the six years prior
to 2007 dominating the Top Fuel landscape on the IHRA tour. The
41-year-old former sportsman standout won six consecutive IHRA world
championships (2001-2006) and eclipsed 'Big Daddy' Don Garlits as the
winningest Top Fuel driver in IHRA history with a career total 51
national event victories in the class, over double Garlits total.

You'd better watch out. You'd better not cry. It won’t do you
any good to pout, either. What's the line? "No crying in drag racing." That goes
for whining. Let's see who gets candy canes and who gets lumps of coal in their
Christmas stockings this year. (And no bribing for the 2008 list -- no cookies
and milk will be accepted in the media room at any race track.) And if you don't
like what you read, go have some figgy pudding and forgeddaboutit. 

A championship has a story and every champion pens that story throughout the year by their actions.

Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com is honored to chronicle their stories in
this two-part series that profiles the big winners on the NHRA POWERade
and IHRA Nitro Jam championship drag racing series.

A championship has a story and every champion pens that story throughout the year by their actions.

Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com is honored to chronicle their stories in this two-part series that profiles the big winners on the NHRA POWERade and IHRA Nitro Jam championship drag racing series.

Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com
opens its annual “What’s new” gallery to prepare you for the upcoming 2008
season. This annual feature will run through February. If you have a new car
rendering or photo, please send it to us in .jpg format and make sure it is a
minimum of 500 pixels wide.

Perhaps if you're a little squeamish you shouldn't read on.
 
This is about tragedy. Not only on the race tracks, but about everyday life, which claims friends we've made.
 
It's something racing fans, media and sanctioning bodies have had to
cope with from the day the first automobile or motorcycle embarked on a
speed test.
  
It's a fatal accident.
   
That being said, I have been asked before and probably will be again, but hopefully, not from readers of this space:
   
"How can you keep covering a sport in which so many people are hurt or lose their lives? Racing is a very dangerous sport?"

Richard Maskin had a morning ritual back in 1971 from which he rarely deviated. He’d head into his office at his grandfather's business, Barnett Pontiac, sit down with his cup of coffee and read the morning newspaper. One day, instead of reading his local paper, Maskin instead picked up an automotive news publication. While he didn't know it at the time, that simple change of routine would forever change the course of his life.

Maskin, a C/Modified Production competitor at the tracks around Detroit saw where Bob Swaim, formerly with the Ford Motor Company, had accepted a position with American Motors. He wasted no time in calling Swaim and scheduling a lunch meeting. It made sense because their offices were only five miles apart.

Maskin learned that Swaim had already offered a deal to “Dyno” Don Nicholson as part of a major push for the American Motors brand in NHRA Pro Stock. Swaim told him there were two smaller programs in addition to Nicholson’s major Pro Stock effort. 

Torco's CompetitionPlus.com attended all 11 IHRA Knoll Gas Nitro Jam Championship Drag Racing events. Logging nearly 10,000
words per event, we brought you the inside and outside of every event
from March until October. We brought you the chills, the spills,
the inside stories and the truths behind the numbers. This is our recap of the 2007 drag racing season.

Dave
Densmore wouldn’t wish the season he’s had on his worst enemy – if he had one.

The man
whose colleagues call him Densy can only wonder what was done in the past to
justify the pain he and the rest of John Force Racing has endured in
2007.

 Densmore is
the team publicist and his daily challenge is to make the team appear in a
positive light. Even Superman has his kryptonite.

 The JFR
infrastructure of good leadership and positive energy gets the credit for
helping Densmore and others make it through.

The IHRA’s Pro Modified division was filled with pioneering drivers. Some are well known and others seemingly forgotten when the credits roll.

Walter Henry’s omission as one of the greatest drivers has nothing to do with his personal character and everything to do with his mortality

This door slamming legend lost his life showcasing the new Pro Modified division during a 1989 exhibition in Atco, New Jersey. Consequently, Henry never saw the fruits of his efforts ripen.

Henry beat the drum for the supercharged combination’s existence in the Top Sportsman Quick Eights and later for inclusion within the IHRA’s initial Pro Modified class blueprints.

Others benefited from his groundwork, such as Tommy Howes and Fred Hahn through team owner Jim Oddy. What Henry did in those pre-Quick Eight days was to put the supercharged combination on the radar screen of IHRA promoters. He simply wouldn’t allow them to forget. He fought alone for inclusion until others arrived on the scene.