Elkhart, Ind. – Terry McMillen, driver of the Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel Dragster unveiled a new website for his race team with many new features.

“We’re excited about the new look and new features,” McMillen said. “We really hope everyone gives it a test drive and lets us know their thoughts.”

The website will take on a new URL, changing from HoosierThunder.com in favor for TerryMcMillen.com. It also incorporates a gator look to compliment the theme McMillen’s cars have become known for with his Amalie partnership.

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WEST 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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PHOENIX, Ariz. – In a career best qualifying effort, Terry McMillen positioned his Amalie Oil Top Fuel dragster in the ninth spot for the NHRA Arizona Nationals. Although his weekend ended early with a first round loss to Steve Torrence, McMillen remains encouraged by his teams improvement.

“That was our ninth pass of the year without any preseason testing,” McMillen said. “That’s no excuse. We’ll come up with a race day tune up. My guys are to good not to.”

The second of 23 NHRA Full Throttle races showed dramatic improvement for the Elkhart Indiana based team, which posted career best 60ft elapsed times, the team’s second best elapsed time (3.896) and a career best qualifying effort (9th).

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TAMPA, Fla. – Amalie Oil announced a multi-year partnership today with Terry McMillen and Hoosier Thunder Motorsports. McMillen will field a Top Fuel team for the entire NHRA Full Throttle drag racing season. The announcement extends a decade long relationship for McMillen and Amalie Oil that began with McMillen’s iconic Amalie Oil InstiGator Alcohol Funny Car.

“This is a big step for us and for Amalie Oil,” McMillen said. “Competing full time against the biggest and best teams in drag racing is going to be challenging and rewarding. I can’t thank them enough for helping us grow our program to this level. It’s the perfect place to showcase Amalie’s ‘Better than it has to be’ product line.”

Amalie’s racing heritage began when their red and white logo began appearing on legendary drag racing teams piloted by Gene Snow and Shirley Muldowney. A decade ago, Amalie began its relationship with McMillen continuing its commitment to showcasing their high performance oil in drag racing.

For the past two seasons, Amalie has been campaigning McMillen’s Top Fuel team in select NHRA races and the results were immediate. McMillen qualified in every event entered, including a record setting field in 2008 at Las Vegas. In 2009 McMillen set a new career best in Englishtown and earned his first round win against then points leader Antron Brown in Charlotte.

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For the second season in a row, Terry McMillen and the Hoosier Thunder Motorsports team have donated a weekend racing trip to the Comp2Kids organization.

For the second year in a row Greg Tusar of Goldman Sachs has been the winning bidder. Greg has generously donated his auction item to Adrian and Alex Brown of Houston Texas.

“We consider Adrian and Alex a lucky charm,” McMillen said. McMillen has piloted the Amalie Oil / Wolverine Boots and Apparel dragster to runner-up finishes in both the events that the Brown’s have attended.

Adrian and Alex forwarded this letter to our team:

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Just a few weeks away now. We can’t wait to get there. Check out the commercial for it.

Terry’s third attempt at qualifying for an NHRA event was another success. The Amalie Oil / Wolverine Boots & Apparel dragster improved with each attempt (16th in 2008 Atalanta, 13th in 2008 Vegas and 12th in 2009 Gainesville). Now if the team could just scratch out a round win or two everyone would be happier.

“We changed everything on this car,” McMillen said. “We’ve got a few more bugs to work out, but I’m confident Kuch will have us among the front runners before too long.”

The 40th annual Gatornationals was the first for McMillen as a driver and Florida Gator fans loved the Amalie gator-themed hot rod. Not only was the car a hit, but team jerseys were popular also.

“We almost needed a police escort,” McMillen laughed. “People we offering to buy our crew jerseys – and they kept raising the ante. It was tempting to consider, but we’ve got some people working on a special jersey for the fans. Plus, we were out of hero cards on Saturday. Gainesville is a madhouse of great drag racing fans. I can’t wait until next year.”

McMillen’s car was also featured on the front page of Thursday’s edition of the Gainesville Sun. The caption for the large photo read “Charlie Matero and Austin Lambright work on the Amalie Oil-Wolverine top fuel dragster Wednesday in preparation for this weekend’s Gatornationals.” The article continued on page 6 with another large photo inside the transporter.

Phil Burgess is the editor of National Dragster – the NHRA house publication. He keeps a notebook from each event and mentioned Terry in it along with others.

Here’s an excerpt:

…Back to Twitter for a moment. It has been interesting to see some of the NHRA race teams that are early adopters of the tool, including John Force Racing, Kalitta Motorsports, and Terry McMillen.

Force publicist Elon Werner is far and away the most prolific tweeter out there, sharing the latest snippets about the progress of the four Force drivers, links to articles about them, and more. Werner also was instrumental in the Twitter live chat that Ashley Force Hood took part in Friday on the FordRacing Twitter page.

Werner also was behind an interesting stunt at the track. He sent out a tweet to all of his followers (more than 900!) telling them to meet at the Force Racing compound in an hour. An hour later, he sent out another tweet looking for any of the followers who had caught his earlier message on their cell phones. Melissa Waterman shot up her hand first, and, as a reward, the Rhode Island resident, on her first trip to Gainesville Raceway, earned a personal visit with Ashley.

McMillen, who qualified for Top Fuel, tried a similar experiment from his Amalie Oil pit but didn’t give any advance warning. He just tweeted that the first two followers to come to his pit would receive a stuffed alligator, the team mascot. Both were gone within a few minutes. “I love it,” said McMillen. “It really goes to show you the power of the new technology.”

You can read the entire story at NHRA.com here (http://www.nhra.com/blog/dragster-insider/)

ELKHART, Ind. – After completing his first season as Top Fuel team owner and driver, Terry McMillen has set his sights even higher for the 2009 racing season. McMillen was two for two in NHRA starts last year (Atlanta / Las Vegas), including a spot in the fastest 1000ft field in NHRA history at the fall Vegas event. McMillen’s NHRA season will begin at the Gator Nationals in Gainesville, Florida.

IHRA success also came often for McMillen and his Amalie Oil sponsored machine. With four final rounds in a row (five total) and one win, McMillen is planning to hit the ground running again this season when they pull in to Baton Rouge for the IHRA season opener.

“We’ve worked harder and spent more money this off-season than we ever have before,” McMillen said from his Indiana race shop. “We’ve never been more prepared to begin a season than we are right now.”

McMillen hopes his off-season spending spree will pay big dividends. Besides the usual parts and pieces required to make a Top Fuel Dragster go fast, McMillen made a significant off-season acquisition in veteran tuner Doug Kuch. Kuch, who stepped in mid-season last year as consultant, will tune the Amalie Oil entry during the 2009 campaign.

“Doug is one of the top tuners in this business and we’re lucky to have him,” McMillen said. “I wish we had one of those big, go-fast budgets so we can turn Doug loose and let him show what he can really do. But, he’s proved that he can work with a tight budget like we have. He’ll give us an opportunity to win every time we’re out there.”

McMillen also added Glen Camp as car chef to his already strong team.

The Hoosier Thunder Motorsports team has also put together one of the more unique motorsports marketing plans. Instead of racing for a championship, McMillen will target specific markets for partners to give them a maximum return on their investment.

“Let’s face it,” McMillen said. “This is a tough economy and we’re extremely blessed to have Amalie Oil as a primary sponsor on our dragster. This season we’ll race more races, but in markets that make the most sense for our partners.”

This outside of the box approach has proved to be McMillen’s first win of the season. “We spent the off-season talking to our partners and all them thought a target market approach would be the best benefit.”

“We may not be running for a championship in the traditional sense. Our championship will be making certain that our partners get a better return on investment than they expected.”