POMONA, Calif. – Terry McMillen drove his Amalie Oil InstiGator Top Fuel Dragster to a new career best elapsed time at the season ending NHRA event. McMillen piloted the UNOH / All Star Performance associate sponsored dragster to a 3.814, 324MPH pass on Friday to set him 11th in the field for Sunday eliminations.
“We were pretty excited about it,” McMillen said. “It’s been an up and down season for us, so to reset our team’s personal best here was a great way to end the year.”
After resetting his career best elapsed time the team had a chance Saturday to begin testing for the 2014 season. “We got our team together and talked about it Friday night,” McMillen added. “We felt like we had figured out the last missing piece of the puzzle. So the big question was do we go after a seventy run, (3,79 or better) since the conditions and track seemed to be there – or do we start looking at some of the new clutch set up that we want to do for 2014. As a team we decided to start preparing for the 2014 campaign and these two Saturday passes would have us two runs ahead for the Palm Beach test session in January.”
McMillen would face Morgan Lucas in first round action. “We left first and led at the 60ft. mark,” McMillen said. “If we were 60ft. racing, we had him covered,” he joked. “We knew it was going to take at least a seventy-nine to run with him. We just missed it a little bit – and hind sight might say that we should have used those two Saturday runs to dial in our tune-up a little more. But, we have no regrets. We’re excited about picking up our new chassis December 1st. The 2014 season started today for us. We can’t wait to get back out here.”
McMillen also wanted to thank the Ontario Airport Holiday Inn for their hospitality, Lance Hansen from My Town Motors for his friendship and support this weekend and Scott Whalstrom from Motor State Distributing / All Star Performance for his continued support and expert cooking skills.
McMillen by the numbers
- 3.814 seconds – McMillen reset his career best, previous best was a 3.822 in Charlotte 2013
- 11-20-13 – She4Life pink jerseys will be auctioned off at TerryMcMillen.com to benefit She4Life. Pink diecast cars are still available at PlanBSales.com
- 12-1-13 – the date Terry McMillen Racing picks up their new chassis
- 3 semi-final appearances – a career best showing in 2014 with appearances in Las Vegas, Epping and Chicago
