NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Terry McMillen did more than earn his first win in 2017 while reaching the Countdown to the Championship for the first time in his long career. The driver of the Amalie Motor Oil Top Fuel dragster proved he belonged among the best in one of the most prestigious classes of NHRA Drag Racing. After suffering a major explosion in Epping midway through the season, McMillen’s team rebounded, reaching a pair of finals and finishing the season in ninth place.

Now, McMillen is out to prove it wasn’t a fluke by moving even higher up the ladder. The driver won seven rounds in 2016, 14 in 2017, and hopes to add more as the new season approaches. Crew chief Rob Wendland enters his fourth season with the team and is equipped with the best parts and pieces he has had at his disposal since joining following the 2014 campaign.

“We’ve elevated our program because of [Wendland], and we’re going to be a whole lot better than we were last year just because we’ve got better parts than we’ve ever had,” said McMillen. “We have fresher blocks, fresher blowers. We just needed to upgrade a little bit, and now we can get our program on a routine where we’ve run something so many runs and we sell it and buy a new one.”

While Wendland enjoys an unfamiliar luxury, he’ll also have to deal with the same rule changes as the rest of the Top Fuel teams. Those changes primarily concern the chassis, and they are significant enough that the generally test-avoidant team will haul the dragster to Phoenix on Thursday for Nitro Spring Training.

“There’s so many uncertainties with the new chassis setup today, with it being a lot stiffer,” said McMillen. “You gotta anticipate 60 foots will fall off a little bit, and the car won’t react the same. There will be a lot of new stuff going on that teams will have to adjust to, whether that means moving the motor or moving all the weight to the back to make the car plant harder. It’s going to be a handful for a little bit.”

How long that adjustment period takes could impact just how wild the beginning part of the season becomes. Leah Pritchett won the first two races last season, and Don Schumacher Racing took home the first five trophies. If the chassis change throws teams for a loop, perhaps things could play out a little less predictably in 2018 — certainly, McMillen hopes so. The winner of the fall Las Vegas event has increased his number of round-wins in each of his years with Wendland at the helm, and, even with one fewer race to do so in 2018, he plans to do the same in the coming year.

“I think it’s going to be a crapshoot for a little while as we accumulate data on these cars and these chassis and the way they’re responding,” said McMillen. “The one thing I give Rob credit for is that we were monitoring a lot of stuff to try to figure out what kind of changes we were going to see coming into this year. So hopefully we hit the gas a couple of times, and we’ll know what we’re doing.”

Consistency, along with the new parts and pieces, is his biggest ally in that battle. McMillen returns in 2018 with much the same crew that brought him 14 round-wins in 2017. He sang the praises of his crew heading into his first Countdown fight last year, and bringing the same team back for this season gives the driver confidence he can build on his previous performance.

“Our goal is much the same as it was last year. We want to be in the top 10, and we want to move up the ladder in the top 10, and we want to win some more races,” said McMillen. “I think the rebound that the team did, and I keep going back to Rob Wendland, but it’s really him and the whole team that dug in and said, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to do, and this is how we’re going to do it. Let’s double- and triple-check everything, and let’s try to execute.’

“One thing Rob has done really well is organize the team so that they can check each other if one person is in trouble. They also know how to troubleshoot, which is something maybe they didn’t do as well before.”

All of that laid the foundation, but for McMillen to regularly compete with the likes of Don Schumacher Racing, he’ll need to get quicker. His career-best elapsed time (3.723), which was recorded in Epping last year, doesn’t crack the top-200 runs of the season. That doesn’t mean he can’t win on any given Sunday, but McMillen wants to grow beyond the driver who longed for warm Sundays that leveled the playing field. He feels he’s already moving in that direction.

"I always thought to myself, ‘Man, I want a really hot day’ because it’s harder for them to slow the big cars down, but now we’re on the other side of that where I don’t necessarily want the heat anymore because Rob does such a good job with the combinations.”

The team’s first few cracks at the dragster should be in cool conditions. The (very) early forecast for the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals presented by ProtectTheHarvest.com in Pomona calls for a high of 76 degrees during Friday qualifying. It will be a little warmer in Phoenix for testing (76 degrees on Thursday), but nothing compares to the sweltering conditions to come during the summer months of the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season. Regardless of the weather, McMillen is set up nicely to take another step forward after the best season of his career.