NHRA Top Fuel’s Millican A Decidedly Different Version Of Schumacher

MILLICAN

They sat there at the starting line for the Top Fuel final at Route 66 Raceway, a fascinating case of comparison and contrast.
 
Tony Schumacher and Clay Millican are so much alike, yet so different. But the fact is that Millican is the Tony Schumacher of the International Hot Rod Association. He maybe is an even bigger legend in that circle, although his 51 Ironman statues and six consecutive series championships can’t top Schumacher’s 72 Wallys and seven National Hot Rod Association series titles.
 
Millican hopes to catch up someday and has an excellent chance to score his first NHRA trophy, now that he has joined Bob Vandergriff Racing. And he was hoping to start that day at Joliet, Ill.

Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Schumacher was making his NHRA-record 125th career final round-appearance, his sixth in 12 races this season in the U.S. Army Dragster. Millican, in the Parts Plus/Caseholed Dragster, was making his sixth overall and his first since March at Gainesville, Fla.
 
This was Chicago-bred Schumacher’s home track. And after denying Millican his first NHRA victory by winning his 72nd, Schumacher said, “Most everybody who gets his first win, it’s against me. And we said, ‘This is not going to be an ongoing trait. We’re going to stop it right now.’ I don’t care if Clay wins a race — just not today, at my home track, when we have such a chance to extend a points lead that will be valuable when we start the Countdown. We’re going for a championship.”
 
But Millican, of Drummonds, Tenn., had Chicago ties, too. He was a forklift operator at a Kroger’s grocery store in West Tennessee at the time, in 1997, and racing in the IHRA Modified eliminator class. An automotive marketing whiz named Raymond King — “the gasket guru” at the time for Fel-Pro– gave him an invitation that launched his pro career.

 
“They had an Employee Day,” Millican said. “I carried my car up there [to the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill.], started it up, revved the motor up.” And that’s when the Fel-Pro owner’s son, Peter Lehman, saw that Millican was more than a local bracket racer. He saw that Millican knew how to fire up not only a nitro-burning dragster but also the employees standing around, watching the spectacle.
 
DSC_8700 copyPeter Lehman, educated in a Connecticut prep boarding school, made Millican the subject of one of his college term papers at prestigious Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. And Millican took Lehman to his first drag race, at Darlington, S.C.
 
“He never went to a race before he went with me,” Millican said, adding that he figured Lehman’s first impression was “I can’t believe this country bumpkin!”
 
Millican called it “a learning experience for both of us. He never had eaten chicken and dumplings. So I introduced him to chicken and dumplings, and he told me what that extra fork was for at the dinner table. We were raised on opposite sides of the spectrum. There’s nothing wrong with either one — we were just raised different. He’s a city boy. He lives downtown. I don’t want to live downtown — except downtown Drummonds, with our no stop lights and no nothin’.”

Lehman started a Top Fuel team, with Chicago White Sox sponsorship that morphed into funding from trucking giant Werner Enterprises, and Millican was on his way to the success he dreamed about all those years when he was — in his words — “out squealin’ tires” on Richardson Landing Road and throughout the Tipton County countryside as a racing-ready teenager.

091-ClayMillicanENGSaturday

Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

 But there on the last day of June 2013 sat Millican, next to Schumacher, who’s a little like Lehman. Schumacher is a “city boy,” a suburban product of Park Ridge, under the flight path of jets landing at and leaving from hectic O’Hare International Airport, a resident of upscale Long Grove today. His childhood memories include running over to the airport to visit with dad Don Schumacher, who was racing a three-car team here and in Europe. (“My family used to meet me at the airport as I traveled through,” his father said.) He’s the son of a mega-team drag racing owner who runs a global, Chicago-headquartered business that grosses, by Tony’s estimate, “well over $100 million” annually.

During the summer it’s race-race-race and I eat healthy, like at gas stations all the time.  I love junk food. It’s all I eat. I am not going to fib and say I’m some workout health nut.

Millican is an avowed “country boy” who grew up in the living quarters over the B & M Grocery his dad Jimmie and mom Martha owned in Drummonds. He described it as “like the community cornerstone, and Mama’s like the local therapist.” The Millicans don’t dispense Williams Old Fashioned shaving mugs, Magic Brand Shaving Powder, and food staples anymore. Millican and wife Donna live only about 600 feet away today, but running the store wasn’t for the lightweight young man with the heavy right foot.
 
“We were always pretty sure that I didn’t want to run it,” Millican said. “I don’t do nothin’ but drag race. I really don’t. This is all . . . I  . . . do.”
 
So he and Tony Schumacher are alike that way — but they’re still decidedly different.
 
Millican has that Tennessee twang and loves to cheer for the University of Tennessee Volunteers. Schumacher cheers for the U.S, Army, in that trademark-harsh Chicago accent that when he says “Chicago” sounds like “Chicaaaaago,” like a quick blast from a fire alarm.
 

Crew chief Kurt Elliot. Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Crew chief Kurt Elliot. Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Schumacher likes a steak dinner with some fine wine (which he used to make in a side venture) and enjoy a choice cigar afterward. Millican, if permitted, would live on Starling-brand bologna (“Darling, make it Starling,” he said, mimicking the company’s advertising motto).
 
“I weigh 142 pounds most of the time. I could be lighter,” he said, although he used to climb onto and stand in celebration on the rear wing of his dragster after an IHRA victory. “During the summer it’s race-race-race and I eat healthy, like at gas stations all the time.  I love junk food. It’s all I eat. I am not going to fib and say I’m some workout health nut. Mountain Dew, Twinkies, coffee — I’m all about that. That’s how I grew up. I grew up in a grocery store, having cheese sandwiches and bologna — Starling Bologna.”
 
No, Millican’s numbers haven’t reached the level of Schumacher’s. He’s making huge strides quickly, though. And that’s no baloney.
 
What has been his biggest move toward earning an NHRA victory — and now a realistic dream of an NHRA championship — also has required his biggest adjustment.
 
No longer does he have the thrill and the luxury of walking out his door and touching his race car. “I like to work on cars, always have,” he said. He lives just north of Memphis, and the car parks at Brownsburg, Ind., where crew chief Kurt Elliot and the team works on it between races. The easy-to-adapt Millican has made a seamless transition into the Bob Vandergriff Racing organization after his official association with Mark and Lauren Pickens ended.

 
“Parts Plus wanted to keep racing, which was awesome,” Millican said. “Spent a little time figuring out where was the best place for Parts Plus and me and my family. And this is the place for me to be. Bob and his family have raced forever and ever and ever. He maintains a clean-running operation, very professional. You just look at all the companies he’s been involved with. That just tells you he’s good at what he does. It just made sense.”

I griped all year for the past couple of years about the multi-car teams, so the best thing for me to do was get involved with one.

He laughed, though.
 
“I griped all year for the past couple of years about the multi-car teams, so the best thing for me to do was get involved with one,” Millican said. “It’s just the way to be competitive, no two ways about it. It’s a good deal. Parts Plus is happy, and that’s what counts. I’m enjoying this — this is nice.”
 
Today, he said, he’s able to “get a lot of work done. Instead of my focus heading off to ‘I wonder how the cylinder heads are getting put together,’ I can focus on those who take care of us. We’ve got a lot of different people involved in this team. My job is to make sure if they need something we’re doing it for them. And I don’t just mean putting on their decals. If there’s something we can do to help grow their business, that’s my job. I’ve always done that.”
 
On the track, he’s growing his own reputation. By the start of the Western Swing, Millican had 160 races without a victory. However, his performance was on the upswing with a No. 1 start at Englishtown, N.J., and runner-up finishes in March at the Gatornationals — only the third race of the season — and at Joliet, Ill., where he was in the middle of the track-record-setting scramble during qualifying.

Still, the first half of the season was a mixed bag for Millican. He also had two straight DNQs, at Charlotte and Houston, where both events lost qualifying runs to rain.

2013_Clay_Millican_Action

Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Then again, Millican has a boss who understands winning a Wally can be a difficult proposition. Vandergriff leads the all-time NHRA chart (for all pro classes) for most final-round appearances before earning a victory (13).
   
That June day at Joliet, Schumacher beat Millican, who was seeking his first NHRA victory in 159 tries. However, Millican knows he has come a long way from that day in Skokie.
 
“I was in a pick-up truck and now here we are in an 18-wheeler,” Millican said. “It wasn’t that many years ago.”
 
One day he can look back on his first NHRA triumph, when he has 50 or more of them, and remark — like fellow multi-time champion Tony Schumacher has done — how the time has flown.   

 

About the author

Susan Wade

Celebrating her 45th year in sports journalism, Susan Wade has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with 20 seasons at the racetrack. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, St. Petersburg Times, and Seattle Times. Growing up in Indianapolis, motorsports is part of her DNA. She contributes to Power Automedia as a freelancer writer.
Read My Articles

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