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FEATURE INTERVIEW

NHRA Superstar Clay Millican:

Racing Highs….and Lows….and Highs Again!

This week our intrepid producer Bernie McPartland snuck into the Texas Fall Nationals with a media pass and caught up once again with NHRA superstar Clay Millican. Clay is IHRA’s most winningest top fuel driver as well as climbing up the ranks in NHRA. His recent win at the US Nationals is like the taking the checkered flag at Daytona or the Red Wings winning the Stanley Cup, it is a very big deal and is cementing Clay as one of the most winningest men in drag racing period! What is great about Clay is that he is humble and honest about what happens behind the wheel and at the track and brings that to this interview.

Clay talked about some great memories of his earliest days of racing, traveling with his two sisters to the Texas Motorplex without parents around and had a great adventure racing. This memory is in his mind as rockets down the same track many years later in the same Texas heat. Clay is now working for team owner Rick Ware as a part of Rick Ware Racing who supports what Clay does whole heartedly and he says it has been a great experience since the transition. When he won the US Nationals there was an overwhelming wave of messages of congratulations, with Rick’s the happiest of all. It was an amazing the level of support he received from his team and his fans and he loved every minute of it.

Winning seems like it is everything and it is hard to admit defeat when it happens. Life is not perfect and failure will  happen at some point in everyone’s lives. Clay says at the end of the day, if you make a mistake, just man up and say you made a mistake. This is a defining mindset of Clay’s team management and is also a great life lesson. He says he is not going to be the one saying there is anyone to blame for a failure but will fully admit when he did something wrong. Once you admit it, you can work to fix it and learn how to not do it again. The wins and losses can be intense but Clay admits he is “not a helmet thrower” as he realizes you can accept the fact that it was not your best and work even harder to make it right the next time.

As a certified car lover Clay has more than one interest in vehicles and he is building a ’57 Chevy with the intent on selling it at auction to raise money for scholarships to put kids into technical colleges. He has teamed up with many great sponsors to make it a fast, head turning vehicle fun car that can be driven anywhere. He has teamed up with Flying Sparks Garage from YouTube and Mike Copeland from Arrington Performance to make this car something really special. To prove it has what it takes, he took it on Power Tour and made it all the way to National Trail Raceway in Hebron Ohio and had a blast racing it all along the route. What makes this vehicle different from the others is that he teamed up with Mike Copeland and had it converted to a hydrogen based fuel system and showed it can be driven long distances and abused a bit as well. Clay and the shoebox Chevy will be at SEMA 2024 everyday of the show showing off the build and the revolutionary hydrogen power conversion Mike did on the car. He said he will be sharing videos and media from the event if you would like to check it out.

Another Clay Millican project is Dently, the 2004 Dodge pickup that has been reworked and taken to the next level by Jeff and Jeffrey Lutz. When he is at home he likes to get out Dently and drive around town or visit some local tracks and lay down some rubber. Clay says he is working towards getting it down into the 10’s while still being street-able. Dently is so named after the fact that his son put a lot of dents in the truck while first learning to drive and has been transformed in his memory. Clay encourages people to fully support drag racing locally. He visited Yello Belly drag strip recently and saw people racing their own cars in head to head racing and having a blast. He said it has a great underground movement feeling to it and was encouraged to see a lot of young kids doing their own thing and having fun. Drag racing is alive and well and needs support to grow and reach more young drivers to continue the fun into the future.

You can find out more about Clay and his team or buy great merchandise and watch some fun videos at ClayMillican.com. If social media is more your style you can stop by Facebook.com/@ClayMillican or scroll through pictures at Instagram.com/ClayMillican. Out of all of the places to follow though, Clay admits that YouTube is his pet passion and he loves posting all kinds of videos there for his fans to watch. You can check those out at https://www.youtube.com/@claymillican25. You can also check out more Rick Ware teams at Instagram.com/RickWareRacing.

Thanks Bernie for the interview and thanks Clay for the tire smoke!