Terry McMillen Racing

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McMillen pulls upsets – defeats Dixon and leaves Pomona in 9th place

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McMillen defeated Dixon in round 1 to move into 9th place

Terry McMillen pulled off an upset victory in the first round of the 51st Annual NHRA Winternationals when he defeated defending NHRA World Champion Larry Dixon. The win put McMillen’s Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel team in 9th place after the first of 22 NHRA Full Throttle events.

“This is just an awesome day, because you have the toughest of the toughest teams out here,” McMillen told CompetitonPlus.com. “I don’t know how many times this guy has won the championship, but he’s an awesome driver with an awesome team. It was our day. He left a little ahead of me, but I never really saw him until he pulled up a little ahead of me.”
“Our car is really fast early. I know he (Dixon) left on me a little bit but we we’re right there with him, then he started to fade. I was pretty excited until our car torched the head and shut off. I was just glad we beat him to the stripe.”

Ontario Grand Inn & Suites and Diamond Honda team up with McMillen for Pomona

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POMONA, Calif. — Terry McMillen’s Amalie Oil / UNOH Top Fuel Dragster crew will sleep in comfort and ride in style thanks to two southern California companies.

Ontario Grand Inn & Suites and Diamond Honda have partnered with McMillen for this weekend’s  51st annual NHRA Winternationals. The new relationships are already special to McMillen.

“Something like this really makes me realize how special southern California really is,” McMillen said. “The extended drag racing community reaches out beyond traditional motorsports sponsors here. These two companies have leaders that love drag racing and their support means a lot to our team.”

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McMillen optimistic about NHRA Winternationals

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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.”

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McMillen hopes West Palm Beach test sessoin provides 2011 blueprint

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IMG_1316.JPGWEST PALM BEACH, Fla.– It was less than two weeks ago that a brand new custom built McKinney dragster found its home at the Hoosier Thunder Motorsports race shop in Elkhart, Indiana, becoming the 2011 Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel Dragster. McMillen’s goal was to have the car ready for its maiden voyage down the strip at Palm Beach International Raceway’s test session, the first weekend in February. 

“This is the first brand new car I’ve ever had, and testing is important to me. I want to go into the season knowing what to expect from the car, and not guessing,” said McMillen. 

On most teams crew members are also full time employees at the race shop so, having a car ready in two weeks would be a piece of cake. For Terry McMillen’s crew however, it wasn’t that easy. There are only three full time employees at McMillen’s race shop, and Crew Chief Richard Hartman is not one of them. So instead of having two weeks to get the Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel dragster ready, the team only had one weekend in which Richard Hartman, five crew members and one UNOH intern joined the three full timers at the shop with one goal in mind – to complete the new car. 

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Full Throttle vacation readies McMillen’s crew for 2011 season

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NASSAU, BAHAMAS  — It seemed like yesterday when the crew on Terry McMillen’s Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel dragster won their second Full Throttle Hardest Working Crew Award of the 2010 season. To show his appreciation for the crew’s hard work, McMillen allowed the crew to determine how they wanted to distribute the winnings.

“I felt rather than pay out the winnings in a bonus check, I would see if they wanted to do something more creative with it,” McMillen said. “They worked very hard this year, and unfortunately the outcome didn’t always reflect the effort my crew put in. I wanted them to enjoy the winnings, and also know how much I appreciated their hard work.” It wasn’t long before the they came to a consensus, a team vacation.

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McMillen agreed a vacation would be great, so frequent cruiser, Chris Cyzak, who works part time on the cylinder heads, took the role of Cruise Coordinator and before you knew it, a vacation was planned. The winnings from the Full Throttle Hardest Working Crew Awards allowed each team member to bring one guest aboard Carnival Cruise Lines, Sensation, for a four night three day cruise to the Bahamas.

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UNOH joins McMillen’s Top Fuel Dragster as Major Associate Sponsor

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IMG_6480.JPGINDIANAPOLIS –The University of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH) and Terry McMillen’s Hoosier Thunder Motorsports announced a unique year-long partnership today that will make UNOH the Major Associate sponsor on McMillen’s Amalie Oil Top Fuel Dragster for the 2011 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing season. 

The University of Northwestern Ohio is located in Lima Ohio and grants master’s, baccalaureate and associate degrees through their Colleges of Technologies, Business, and Distance Learning. The College of Technologies has a storied racing history with its involvement in ARCA, NASCAR, NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, the UNOH Perfect Storm 150 contested at the Bristol Motor Speedway and the UNOH Southern Slam 150 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Now UNOH joins McMillen on the NHRA tour to add drag racing to its list of racing involvement.

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Hoosier Thunder wants to make noise in Thunder Valley

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Pre Race – BRISTOL, Tenn.  – Terry McMillen drove his Amalie Oil Top Fuel dragster to his third consecutive first round win last Sunday in Englishtown. McMillen hopes his team can continue and improve on this short streak that has placed him within NHRA’s Top 10 for the first time in his career.
Is a Round One win automatic for the team now?
“We’ll never take anything for granted,” McMillen said. “We’ve got four round wins for a career and three of those over the last three weeks. There are teams out here that get that in a weekend. We’re just trying to keep that ‘any given Sunday’ mentality. If we stay consistent, maybe we can string a few round wins together and find ourselves in a final round before the year is over.”

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Summertime and the living is easy…

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ENGLISHTOWN, Pre Race – When the Joliet race began, it marked the beginning of a 7 race – 8 week stint in the Full Throttle Drag Racing Series. The Amalie Oil Top Fuel / Hoosier Thunder Motorsports team wanted to try something a little different for our “quad back to back,” followed by a breather, then a “triple back to back” race schedule.

Instead of a ‘traditional’ press release – we’re opting for something a little more relaxed. Call it our laid back news and notes or something ‘funner’ when a better name comes to us.

Without further ado:

Chitown Hustle – or was it the hurry up and wait? Rain made for some late nights and earlier mornings at the Joliet race. We got our second round win of the season in a match up with Bob Vandergriff and didn’t have enough for Schumacher in round two. We ran side by side with him to about the 330 foot mark – then hazed the tires. We may have been a little too aggressive at that spot of the track, or there might have been a mist of oil on the track (several fans and friends told us the next five teams smoked the tires in the exact same spot). The car is back to making some strong early numbers. Richard and Terry are working on some magic clutch dust to sprinkle in on the disc to get us through the ‘haze zone’ for Englishtown. The Joliet round win pulls us within 12 points of Grubnic and the elusive 10th spot.

“We’re really happy about getting our second, first round win,” McMillen said. “Richard has this car running very consistent and winning rounds consistently on race day is a testament to the team’s hard work. I hope this means we don’t have to get another monkey for the second round.”


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McMillen carries momentum into hometown Chicago race

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JOLIET, Ill.  — After earning his first round win of the season, Terry McMillen, driver of the Amalie Oil Top Fuel dragster hopes that momentum will carry him deeper into the race at his first hometown appearance in a Top Fuel dragster. The Route 66 Raceway is just minutes from the streets that McMillen roamed as a young man.

“Everything started for me around here,” McMillen said. “I worked two paper routes in this area just to be able to buy my first car and race at U.S. 30 Dragstrip. That 392 (cubic inch) Hemi with two four barrel carburators had to compete against some of the baddest hotrods around.”

While the drag racing competition in the Chicago area was tough in the early days, McMillen knows it’s just as tough today.

“There has always been a lot of top teams in this area and I think if you just look at the depth of the Nitro fields and the car counts, you began to realize that this is a special race for a lot of us. It’s like everyone is looking for a little bragging rights.”

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McMillen gets monkey off his back in Topeka

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TOPEKA, Kan. — It took nine tries, but Terry McMillen, driver of the Amalie Oil Top Fuel team, got his first round win of the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle season. McMillen defeated Steve Torrence in the opening round of the O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka. The win gets the proverbial monkey off of his team’s back and gives the Elkhart, Ind. based team momentum going into the heart of the summer racing season.

“I knew we had something to work with after Saturday night qualifying,” McMillen said. “When we ran the fifth best elapsed time of Q4 I knew Richard [Hartman – Crew Chief] had a good tune-up for our car.”

The Amalie Oil dragster was only one of two teams able to win from the bottom half of the ladder and the right lane. McMillen posted a 3.917 e.t. at 307.86mph to Torrence’s 3.994 e.t. at 303.50mph.

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