Clay Millican, Werner/Koretsky Top Fuel Team Return to Site of Four IHRA Wins
DINWIDDIE, Va. (Oct. 3, 2006) - Clay Millican will be returning to Virginia Motorsports Park looking for his fifth consecutive Top Fuel victory in the Torco Racing Fuels Nationals at the Dinwiddie facility, near Richmond.
The major difference since his fourth win has been a change of sanctioning bodies. His four straight victories came at International Hot Rod Association events. This time around, it's the National Hot Rod Association in charge, and that means the personable six-time IHRA champion and 49-race winner will be looking, instead, for win No. 1.
"It is going to be fun going to Richmond to run this year," said Millican. "We are the track's defending race champion, but we haven't raced with NHRA for a while. They probably forgot about us."
That's not likely, but Mike Kloeber, Werner Enterprises/Kenny Koretsky Motorsports Top Fuel team crew chief, could be every other crew chief's best friend because he has a mountain of data on the track and its racing conditions.
"We are anxious to see what has changed at the track since we were there last year," added Millican. "We were told they were going to be making a lot of improvements.
As far as Millican and Kloeber are concerned, there couldn't be many things wrong with a track that produced four wins in four years, from 2002 to 2005.
Millican said a wholesale change of parts last Friday night helped Kloeber get his tune-up back on track. "The car responded to Mike's changes" and that led to a rain-delayed Monday victory over Rick Cooper in an IHRA race in Maryland. The victory officially ended the 2006 title race and provided the team with its unprecedented sixth consecutive IHRA championship.
"Now we can concentrate on trying to get our first NHRA win," Millican said. "We know it's going to happen sooner or later . . . and we all want it to be sooner."
Qualifying sessions are scheduled at 4 and 7 p.m. Friday and noon and 3 p.m. Saturday. Eliminations get underway Sunday at 11 a.m.
