02/23/11 Terry McMillen, driver of the Amalie Oil / UNOH Top Fuel Dragster is optimistic 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 elapsed time at 3.823 seconds, despite shutting the car of early.
“I’m excited to say the least,” McMillen said. “We spent the off-season 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.”
“You would think that building a new car, freshening up my car from last year and buying another backup car would be enough to keep us busy. But we also bought a lot of new parts and put everything we owned on a dyno and came up with a brand new tuneup. We are ready to go NHRA Full Throttle racing.”
While the investment in off-season work and preseason testing appears to have paid off, McMillen knows it doesn’t mean much until the engines are fired during the 51st running of the NHRA Winter-nationals.
“We’re coming to Pomona with the same goals and aspirations as we did last season: qualify well, win some rounds, be in the Countdown when we leave Indy and make our sponsors proud.”
Hoosier Thunder Motorsports partners with high-quality and high-performance companies like: Amalie Oil, University of Northwestern Ohio, ARP, Auto Meter, Mahle Clevite, Cyclo, Darton Sleeves, Flatout Gaskets, Global Power Systems, Hedman Hedders, Impact Racing, MSD, Perfect Circle and Mechanix Wear.
To learn more about Hoosier Thunder Motorsports, visit http://hoosierthunder.com.
