GAINESVILLE, Fla. (March 19, 2018) – Terry McMillen and his AMALIEⓇ Motor Oil XTERMIGATORⓇ Top Fuel team, led by crew chief Rob Wendland, reset their career best mile per hour for the second time this season at 328.46MPH. The annual east coast opener for NHRA also saw McMillen and team earn another career first; bonus points for quickest elapsed times in back-to back session when they posted the third and second quickest times of the third and fourth qualifying sessions.
McMillen qualified eighth for Sunday eliminations and went on to defeat Scott Palmer in a close opening round match-up with a 3.763e.t. to Palmer’s 3.777e.t. With McMillen’s starting line advantage the margin of victory (MOV) was 0.0315 seconds. McMillen’s opening round run not only reset his career best MPH but was also the third fastest winning elapsed time of the opening round – giving McMillen lane choice over his friendly rival Clay Millican for the round two match up. Millican posted a 3.758 to McMillen’s losing effort of 3.831. The losing elapsed time was forth fastest of the second round.
“Rob (Wendland) and I talked about it going into round two,” McMillen said. We thought a 3.79 or 3.80 would win it that round. The sun came out and it was getting pretty greasy out there. The pair in front of us had just smoked the tires in both lanes, so we wanted to make sure we could get down through there. Dave Grubnic (Millican’s crew chief) took a shot at it and made it stick – they just kicked our butts. There’s not a lot we can do except take our hats off to them and go back out there and get them next time. If we rolled the cars back up there again we wouldn’t have done anything different.”
“It was really a good weekend for us,” McMillen continued. “We proved we can be a top three or four car pretty much every session. We’re going to keep picking away at it and keep getting better and win another one of these races.”
With the round win, McMillen moved back into the tenth spot in the point standings and is four points ahead of where he was after Gainesville last season.
“There’s a lot of season left and a lot of rounds left to be raced,” McMillen said. “We’re not going away. This gator is going to keep chomping.”
The 2018 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season continues with the DENSO Spark Plug NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway April 6-8 in Las Vegas.
