COMMERCE, Ga. (May 7, 2017) – Terry McMillen posted one of his most consistent weekends this season in the AMALIEⓇ Motor Oil XTERMIGATORⓇ Top Fuel Dragster. His team’s efforts fell short in the first round of eliminations after posting a 3.772 second pass to points leader Leah Pritchett’s 3.699 pass.
McMillen and crew chief Rob Wendland made their best qualifying effort of the season, qualifying sixth for the 16 car contest. The the team effort comes on the heels of McMillen’s final round appearance in Charlotte just a week ago. McMillen has now posted five of seven qualifying efforts this season in the 3.7 second range.
“We had a very consistent hot rod all weekend long,” McMillen explained. “We came out here and ran a couple of 3.78s on Saturday and then improved a little more on Sunday. It just wasn’t enough today.”
McMillen was confident of going deep into elimination rounds on Sunday and wasn’t expecting a new track record from Pritchett’s team in the first round. “I think that’s what they call getting your butt handed to you,“ McMillen said shortly after the round loss. “They took a swing at it and hit it out of the park. There’s not much we can do about that except try and swallow being the fastest loser again.”
“We’re not going to hang our heads,” he continued. “This car is coming back clean and happy after every run. We’re going to keep sneaking up on our tune-up. No big changes, just figure out how to run in the low seventies and then on to the sixties. We’ve had a lot of firsts in Topeka. We’ll see what happens in a couple of weeks.”
Topeka marked McMillen’s first round win as a full-time NHRA racer and it’s also home to McMillen’s career first 3.70s pass last season. McMillen leaves Atlanta eighth in points, just over two rounds behind Brittany Force for seventh.
The next stop for the NHRA Mello Yello series is Heartland Park Topeka May 19-21.
