Terry McMillen (1 Viewer)

[Mike]

Terry McMillen announcement

It's official. Limited schedule driving for Dan Mercier. US Nationals and a couple others, with several to be named later.

 

[Jeff]

That Is awesome!

 

[qualified17th]

"In return Mercier has offered coaching tips to cameron if he decides to make the jump to a Top Alcohol Dragster"

Isn't Cam like, 7? LOL

 

[Chili]

Fwiw, I don’t think Amalie Oil is with him any more. He made a post on instagram a while back about it.

 

[Al]

I'm curious of the no mention of if Rob Wendland is still with the team.

 

[Jer]

I'm curious of the no mention of if Rob Wendland is still with the team.

Im not sure if he has a contract with terry,but if not im surprised nobody has hired him for cc

 

[mick]

here's where nhra needs to step in and have some sort of policy for part time teams.
rite now, every team gets to decide when and where they want to race. i get it. schedules, sponsors, regions......but,
what if a national event A is booked with 17 cars and national event B is one or two weeks later and is only booked with 15 cars.
you're a part timer and for whatever reasons you really want to race national event A, but your participation in national event B instead would better serve your class and the nhra.
does nhra/pro create a method of communication that helps national events maintain 16 cars fields? or just status quo where a few nat. events have excess, and some fall way short?

good luck to terry and dan this year. glad to see they will be out competing.

 

[Jeff]

"In return Mercier has offered coaching tips to cameron if he decides to make the jump to a Top Alcohol Dragster"

Isn't Cam like, 7? LOL

The sentence preceding that was:
"Mercier, a serious Top Alcohol dragster racer who has raced a handful of Top Fuel events, also had a request of his own regarding Cameron which included the youngster coaching Mia Mercier, Dan’s two-year old daughter, in a few years to drive a junior dragster"

Sounds like a plan for the future...

 

[qualified17th]

here's where nhra needs to step in and have some sort of policy for part time teams.
rite now, every team gets to decide when and where they want to race. i get it. schedules, sponsors, regions......but,
what if a national event A is booked with 17 cars and national event B is one or two weeks later and is only booked with 15 cars.
you're a part timer and for whatever reasons you really want to race national event A, but your participation in national event B instead would better serve your class and the nhra.
does nhra/pro create a method of communication that helps national events maintain 16 cars fields? or just status quo where a few nat. events have excess, and some fall way short?

good luck to terry and dan this year. glad to see they will be out competing.

I don't see how the small teams (the ones being affected by the policy) would ever sign off on that.

Look at TJ Zizzo last year. They had the money to go to either Brainerd or Indy, but not both. Normally you'd always go to Indy, right? The US Nationals, biggest race of the year, biggest audience of the year, biggest purse of the year, who in their right mind would go to little old Brainerd instead of Indy? Well, they had a sponsor based in Minnesota, they had planned on having people come out to the Brainerd race, it was really important to them to have the car out on track in their home market, so on so forth. And if you know the first thing about sponsorship in racing, you know that if your sponsor asks you to do something, you do that something, or you don't have that sponsor for very long. So Zizzo ends up skipping Indy to go to Brainerd.

Had that rule been in place, his option to do that might not have been there, which likely ends up costing TJ a sponsor. While yes, Indy probably isn't going to be short on cars, there are all sorts of other examples like this where a rule like that ends up putting the teams in a box. Might be a good idea on paper, but in the end it's probably best to just let the teams do what's in their best interest, and accept that the occasional short field has always been and will always be a part of drag racing.

 

[nwspeedshots]

If I were a part-time team, no one would need to mandate that I show up at the lesser attended events.

 

[NitroRichFire]

Is he working with Mercier Racing since Terry McMillen will be driving the top fuel dragster?

 

[jimbo]

I don't see how the small teams (the ones being affected by the policy) would ever sign off on that.

Look at TJ Zizzo last year. They had the money to go to either Brainerd or Indy, but not both. Normally you'd always go to Indy, right? The US Nationals, biggest race of the year, biggest audience of the year, biggest purse of the year, who in their right mind would go to little old Brainerd instead of Indy? Well, they had a sponsor based in Minnesota, they had planned on having people come out to the Brainerd race, it was really important to them to have the car out on track in their home market, so on so forth. And if you know the first thing about sponsorship in racing, you know that if your sponsor asks you to do something, you do that something, or you don't have that sponsor for very long. So Zizzo ends up skipping Indy to go to Brainerd.

Had that rule been in place, his option to do that might not have been there, which likely ends up costing TJ a sponsor. While yes, Indy probably isn't going to be short on cars, there are all sorts of other examples like this where a rule like that ends up putting the teams in a box. Might be a good idea on paper, but in the end it's probably best to just let the teams do what's in their best interest, and accept that the occasional short field has always been and will always be a part of drag racing.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

 

[Pete]

here's where nhra needs to step in and have some sort of policy for part time teams.
rite now, every team gets to decide when and where they want to race. i get it. schedules, sponsors, regions......but,
what if a national event A is booked with 17 cars and national event B is one or two weeks later and is only booked with 15 cars.
you're a part timer and for whatever reasons you really want to race national event A, but your participation in national event B instead would better serve your class and the nhra.
does nhra/pro create a method of communication that helps national events maintain 16 cars fields? or just status quo where a few nat. events have excess, and some fall way short?

good luck to terry and dan this year. glad to see they will be out competing.

NHRA knows how many cars will attend each event...in the past (2009 was the last year I know of it happening) they would reach out and offer independent teams first round money to show up, guaranteeing them a full field. Not sure if this happens today

 

[mick]

i addressed sponsors in the second line of my post. it is something part time sponsors have been able to dictate in nhra forever.
what i'm suggesting is what if nhra did not allow this, and instead made every effort to fill 16 car fields at each and every event.
maybe you're all right. maybe the pit/b2b/hospitality aspect of nhra supersedes short fields with bye runs on sunday.
guess i'm just looking at other series that seem to almost guarantee full fields; doesn't seem like something's missing. maybe not so important to nhra.

 

[Dennis]

i addressed sponsors in the second line of my post. it is something part time sponsors have been able to dictate in nhra forever.
what i'm suggesting is what if nhra did not allow this, and instead made every effort to fill 16 car fields at each and every event.
maybe you're all right. maybe the pit/b2b/hospitality aspect of nhra supersedes short fields with bye runs on sunday.
guess i'm just looking at other series that seem to almost guarantee full fields; doesn't seem like something's missing. maybe not so important to nhra.

Or maybe if NHRA didn't compete with the teams for sponsors, that would help. Cough cough Amalie....

Kind of an unfair advantage if your proposal is "guaranteed exposure on Gatornationals collateral" versus "sponsor a team and hope and pray they make a few rounds to get exposure".

 

[ZWeinstein]

NHRA knows how many cars will attend each event...in the past (2009 was the last year I know of it happening) they would reach out and offer independent teams first round money to show up, guaranteeing them a full field. Not sure if this happens today

I think this has still happened in recent years. My memory could be fuzzy but I remember a few years ago that our race in Phoenix was going to have only 15 top fuel cars entered and at the last second Chuck Worsham and Steve Chrisman brought the school dragster out and made one half track qualifying hit on Saturday. I asked Steve about it and I think he said they were offered tow money from NHRA. I know generally when Steve drives Chuck's car they usually have the car there for somebody making licensing runs on Monday so they generally only make one qualifying run to shake the car down.

 

[Pete]

I think this has still happened in recent years. My memory could be fuzzy but I remember a few years ago that our race in Phoenix was going to have only 15 top fuel cars entered and at the last second Chuck Worsham and Steve Chrisman brought the school dragster out and made one half track qualifying hit on Saturday. I asked Steve about it and I think he said they were offered tow money from NHRA. I know generally when Steve drives Chuck's car they usually have the car there for somebody making licensing runs on Monday so they generally only make one qualifying run to shake the car down.

I have no doubt they still do it...tow $ + 1st round $

 

[Tybamf]

Anyone have an idea what is going on with these guys? I thought they were supposed to be at Virginia, but don't believe they were. Looking at the Epping entry list, Mercier is on it but no Terry?

 

[Chili]

Anyone have an idea what is going on with these guys? I thought they were supposed to be at Virginia, but don't believe they were. Looking at the Epping entry list, Mercier is on it but no Terry?

I was kind of wondering the same thing. Terry did break his ankle back in February but not sure if that is still an issue. Comp Plus had an article about Wendland helping Mercier get the car setup and training the crew but oddly enough there was no mention of McMillen at that time.

 

[Jer]

I was kind of wondering the same thing. Terry did break his ankle back in February but not sure if that is still an issue. Comp Plus had an article about Wendland helping Mercier get the car setup and training the crew but oddly enough there was no mention of McMillen at that time.

Pretty sure he is over his ankle injury. Poor guy cant catch a break