POMONA, Calif. (February 11, 2017) – Terry McMillen and his AMALIEⓇ Motor Oil XTERMIGATORⓇ team started the season the way they started the 2016 season – only a little better. McMillen’s, Rob Wendland tuned team recorded a new personal best elapsed time in the fourth qualifying session when they posted a 3.734, qualifying them seventh. They took that momentum into the first round of eliminations and clocked another solid 3.75 run in their win against Clay Millican in round one.
“Overall it was a great weekend,” McMillen explained. “We came out here treating the qualifying sessions as our test sessions since we missed testing. Rob and our team did a great job in the offseason getting us ready to come out here and compete. Don Schumacher Racing put together a phenomenal chassis for us. Anytime you can roll one of these cars out of the box and you can put down a 3.82, a 3.73 and a 3.75, you feel like you have a pretty good hot rod and a chance to compete. That’s all we can ask for.”
McMillen faced Doug Kalitta in the second round of eliminations and didn’t fair quite as well.While the car continued posting solid eary incremental times, a mid-race incident caused an explosion that slowed McMillen from his previous pace.
“We had an intake valve give us a problem and it brought us back to reality a little bit,” McMillen said.”We’re leaving here in the Top 10 like we did last year – so, we just have to build on that and get to Phoenix and see if we can repeat. I’m confident that we can.”
The next stop for the NHRA Mello Yello tour is February 24-26 at the Wildhorse Pass near Phoenix.
