BRISTOL, Tenn. – Terry McMillen put both Amalie/UNOH Top Fuel Dragsters in the show at the Ford NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals and at the same time posted his best qualifying performance of the year (7th) and a new personal best mile per hour (316.45mph) in 1,000ft racing.  His team also made solid runs on the second car driven my car-chief Austin Lambright who qualified 16th in his first NHRA Top Fuel start.

“Over-all is was a pretty good weekend,” McMillen said. “We would certainly have liked a better outcome on Sunday – we’re going to have to do better on Sundays if we plan on staying in this hunt for the Countdown. But, I’m proud of my guys. It’s a lot of work for us to field two cars and they did well. Hopefully our marketing partners will see the additional exposure from this race.”

In the first round of qualifying on Friday McMillen’s team was able to post the third fastest time of the session, gaining an additional Countdown point, his fifth of the season. While McMillen missed an opportunity to gain points on Morgan Lucas (currently 8th) in the first round loss, he was able to keep pace with Shawn Langdon (currently 9th) and maintain his lead over Vandergriff (currently 11th) – both by slim margins. McMillen trails Langdon by just 32 points and leads Vandergriff by a slimmer 12 point margin.

Austin Lambright made his Top Fuel debut at Bristol for McMillen’s racing team. He posted three solid and clean runs to make his first start in his first try, qualifying 16th.  He faced Brandon Bernstein in the first round of eliminations.  Lambright made a solid effort; posting a 4.04 e.t. to Bernstein’s winning 3.88 e.t.

“It was a great experience,” Lambright said. “If we can get some marketing partners interested in that car maybe I’ll get a chance to race again soon.”

Many friends and family were in attendance for Lambright’s debut, including long-time McMillen marketing partner Mark Adelizzi of Flatout Gaskets. “It was great to have Mark at the race,” McMillen said. “He’s been a friend of our team for a long time. So, it was nice to have his support, especially for this race.”

The next stop for McMillen’s Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel Dragster is this weekend’s Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals.

TOPEKA, Kan. – Terry McMillen drove his Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel Dragster to another round win during the NHRA Summer Nationals. It marked McMillen’s fourth round win of the year, matching his 2010 win total in just seven races.

“We got our first round win of the 2010 season here,” McMillen said. “So, it was nice to get another round win here.”
McMillen started eliminations from the 12th spot after struggling through qualifying. The 3.898 elapsed time in the opening round would be the team’s best performance of the weekend and enough to beat Shawn Langdon to the stripe. McMillen would fall to Spencer Massey in round two after a fuel line broke and sprayed fuel on the tires. Massey would go on to win the event.

“We struggled through qualifying,” McMillen said. “We fixed a little problem in our fuel system and just in time. We want to qualify a little better, so hopefully the same car we loaded in the transporter will be the same one we bring out when we get to Englishtown.”

The round win was enough to keep the team 10th in points, just 35 points out of seventh place. “The points are pretty tight right now from seventh to 12th,” McMillen said. “We’ve got Vandergriff and Grubnic breathing down our neck and at the same time we’re just two rounds from being in the middle of the pack. It’s going to be a fight all summer long and we’re not expecting it to be easy. We’re going to have to fight for every qualifying spot and every round win if we want to be in the top 10 when we get to Indy.”

COMMERCE, Ga. – After struggling through three qualifying sessions, Terry McMillen and his Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel Dragster used the fourth and final session to sneak into the 14th position for the 31st annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals. McMillen made the most of his last chance qualifying and parlayed it into a career best semifinal appearance.

“We were trying some different things in qualifying and it just wasn’t working the way we hoped. We were all a little nervous going into Q4 (4th qualifying session) and my crew did a great job of stepping up to the plate and gave us a solid A to B run to get into the show.”

McMillen’s 3.965 e.t. at 304.46mph was good enough to make the field and put the team in position to face Brandon Bernstein in round one of eliminations. McMillen had been winless against Bernstein in four tries before finally beating him in the opening round at Atlanta. The 3.096 e.t. at 313mph would best McMillen’s qualifying run and set up a second round matchup with Bob Vandergriff.

“I’ve got to thank Richard and my crew for giving me a car with enough performance advantage to overcome my bad reaction times,” McMillen said. “I’m not sure what’s going on there, but I can promise this – I’m going to work on it.”

McMillen and Vandergriff left the line together in round two and the Amalie Oil/UNOH Dragster was able to pull away giving McMillen his first semifinal appearance since joining the NHRA circuit. McMillen would face Antron Brown in the semifinals, but would fall short of the desired win. Brown would go on to win the event.

“It was a great weekend for our team,” McMillen said. “Hopefully it’s given us the experience and the confidence that we need to do this on a consistent baisis.”

The next stop for McMillen is this weekend’s NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka.

CONCORD, N.C. – After several more decent qualifying attempts at the zMAX Dragway, Terry McMillen and his Amalie Oil/UNOH team find themselves in the same position on Sunday – saddled with their third consecutive first round lost.“It’s certainly frustrating,” McMillen explained. “But I’ve never left a race this confident.” And for good reason.

McMillen qualified his Top Fuel ride consistently during the weekend including a 3.874 elapsed time in the fourth qualifying session. While the run was good enough to put him in the 11th spot for the 4-Wide race, it was what the team learned that gave McMillen confidence in the losing effort on Sunday.

“The car ran an eighty-seven and we dropped six cylinders right at the end of the run. So we knew we had a strange problem,” McMillen said. “As it turns out we’ve been having an electrical problem – maybe since Pomona, that was intermittent and never really showed itself until it dropped all of those holes at once. We had MSD test some things and found that we had a short to the ground. Our guys worked late on Saturday to fix the problem, but it ended up giving us more power than we had all weekend and we just didn’t compensate enough for that on Sunday morning. So, while the car was wanting to run something like an eighty-one or eighty-two (3.81 or 3.82), it just gave us a little more power than we thought we would have; so the car started spinning the tires pretty hard on the big end.”

“The bottom line is our tune-up and motor is back to what we had in West Palm Beach testing and that excites me. We’ll be frustrated for a little bit and kick ourselves for not figuring this out a little earlier, but we’re biting at the bit to get this Amalie/UNOH Top Fuel Dragster to Houston to see what we can do.”

The next stop for McMillen is the NHRA Spring Nationals in Houston, Tex. April 29-May1.

LAS VEGAS — Terry McMillen’s Amalie Oil/UNOH Top Fuel team qualified tenth for the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals. In doing so, they put together their best qualifying performance of the season, earning two Bonus Points for the third best elapsed times in the first and third qualifying sessions. Those efforts fell short of their round win goal when McMillen lost to David Grubnic during Sunday’s first round of eliminations.

“It was a pretty close drag race to just about half track,” McMilen explained. “One of the spark plugs pushed the porcelain center all the way out. The rods and the race went next.”

“I’m really proud of the way my team put together a solid car for qualifying,” McMillen said. “Although we improved our consistency – we to get more consistent on Sunday.”