NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Summit Motorsports Park is near and dear to Clay Millican’s heart. In addition to a previous wins at “America’s Race Track,” Millican carries the event sponsor on the side of this Rick Ware Racing Top Fuel Dragster. Currently sixth in points, the Drummonds, Tn. driver sits ninth after two rounds of qualifying for the Summit Racing Equipment Nationals.

“I'll tell you what, it has been a whirlwind of racing the last few weeks, and I absolutely love it,” said an excited Millican. “Richmond last weekend was hot and crazy, with a warm racetrack, then we tested with Tony Schumacher on Monday, and stopped at Lutz Race Cars on Wednesday. Thursday, we did the Summit Cruise In at Summit Racing’s Tallmadge, Ohio facility and I was at Tony DiFore’s place with a lot of customers from Parts Plus after that.

“Yesterday we got back to racing and we had ourselves a bracket car right here,” Millican stated. “We ran 3.82 twice and went right down the racetrack. And we had an amazing firework show, not only from the Bader family, but also from the man upstairs with all the lightning bolts last night. It was cool when I was staging for the final run yesterday. The lightning popping off in the background was pretty dang cool. I wish everybody could have experienced that. If you've never been to one of these events, you've got to come out, you got to come see them, feel them, smell them. There’s nothing like nitro and especially right here at Summit Motorsports Park.”

If Millican sounds excited it’s because Summit Motorsports Park is like a second home. “Oh, yeah. I wish I had counted how many wins I have here, I have a lot of them, and I have a lot of memorable moments at this place, too. I mean, you know, back in the IHRA days, this was the one you wanted to win. You know, it was the big one.

“And as far as I'm concerned, it's still a big one. You know, everybody wants to get that ice cream scoop from Billy Bader Jr. at the end of the day on Sunday. I haven't done that yet, but that's our plan tomorrow. I mean how much better could it be, you know, when the track’s name is Summit Motorsports Park and you're carrying Summit on the car, to check that off would be pretty cool, and I know it would make all the folks to Summit happy. It certainly would make us happy.”

Millican will hit the track for two more qualifying runs on Saturday, looking to improve on his previous 3.823 at 324 mph that earned him the ninth spot provisionally. “It's going to be cooler out there and I think we can improve our position. We ended up number nine and didn’t run as quick as we wanted last night. To be honest, I don't think any of the Top Fuel cars ran as quick as they thought they would. The track surprised everybody a little bit, it was better than we thought, and it probably got through the clutch a little bit,” he stated.

“But you know what? That's what Jimbo [Jim Oberhofer] and Nick [Boninfante] do, and now we got an extra set of eyeballs with us from Rob Flynn. You know, he'll be tuning Tony Schumacher's car. He's been with us the last two races looking in and peeping over Jimbo and Nick’s shoulder to see how we run this car and we’re looking forward to all that as well.”

We asked Millican; what does adding the 8-time champion Schumacher as a teammate do for you? “I think it will be awesome, I've never had anybody who I could share what the car's doing with and listen to what they think the car is doing. He's an 8-time world champion so you've got to listen to what he's got to say. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

“As far as today, because we're solidly qualified, we might as well see what we can get away with. Is that why Jimbo and Nickey's going to do? I have no idea. I'm just going to get in there and stomp on the loud pedal and take what it gives us. But I think they will attempt to improve our position because we do know the track is good. It got a little washing this morning. Hopefully that doesn't affect the traction that we had yesterday. But this place is always good. You know, the weather does make it a challenge, but I think we're ready for it. I think the fans are ready for it, too. This place is always a staple for the people around this area. They flood this place, and I love that. As race car drivers, we kind of like showing off in front of a big crowd and you can always count on that here.

“We did a Summit autograph session yesterday. We also learned yesterday that I could be a little bit of a lumberjack. I participated in the Hot Saw Pro/Am Competition. Because you had one pro and one amateur, and certainly the amateur was me when it comes to running a chainsaw, but we ended up in the runner-up spot. I ended up beating Chris King in the final, you know, running the old chainsaw there. That was a lot of fun.”