POMONA, Calif. — Terry McMillen, driver of the Amalie Oil / UNOH Top Fuel Dragster is optimisitc about his second full season in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series – and for good reasons. The Indiana based team left a recent West Palm Beach test session after clocking a career best elaspsed time at 3.823 seconds, despite shutting the car of early.
“I’m excited to say the least,” McMillen said. “We spent the offseason putting together a brand new McKinney car and as soon as we pulled it off the trailer in West Palm it ran the best incremental times I’ve ever run. We kept all of the good things we learned from last season and threw out the rest.”
The good news and optimism comes at a cost for McMillen who admits to spending a big part of his early season budget. “We’ve tested and spent more this preseason than we ever have,” McMillen said. “It certainly helped us prepare when Amalie signed on for two more years and with the addition of the University of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH) and Wolverine coming back on board with us this off-season.”
“You would think that building a new car, freshening up my car from last year and buying another backup car would be enough to keep us busy. But we also bought a lot of new parts and put everything we owned on a dyno and came up with a brand new tuneup. We’re ready to go NHRA Full Throttle racing.”
While the investment in offseason work and preseason testing appears to have paid off, McMIllen knows it doesn’t mean much until the engines are fired during the 51st running of the NHRA WInternationals.
“We’re coming to Pomona with the same goals and asperations as we did last season: qualify well, win some rounds, be in the Countdown when we leave Indy and make our sponsors proud.”
