Clay Millican and Rick Ware Racing feel they are NHRA Top Fuel championship-ready and, as such, should be taken seriously within the class.

“I think we’ve earned that,” Millican told RACER. “It’s not a team they’re looking forward to racing in the first round.”

Millican and his team were in the championship picture the last few seasons, albeit in a different way. In September 2022, ahead of the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, Ware announced the formation of his Top Fuel team with Millican. The sixth race of their partnership and the season’s penultimate race was in Las Vegas.

Millican struggled in qualifying in Las Vegas and landed a matchup with Justin Ashley in the first round of race day. It was a fateful matchup as Millican eliminated Ashley, who had been tearing through the Countdown. A week later, Ashley’s downfall continued in the first round, and he lost the championship.

In 2023, Millican and Ware won three races at Chicago, Bandimere and St. Louis, marking Millican’s highest number of victories in a single season. Those were the first three wins for Ware as a team owner.

And last year, the team won the prestigious U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. Millican and Ware ended the year with a mathematical chance at the championship, although they needed help in the finale. Ultimately, Millican finished sixth in the standings.

“I see that consistency continuing to grow as we go into the third year of Rick Ware Racing.”

The team that is now Rick Ware Racing was the Doug Stringer organization for which Millican previously competed. During the 2022 season, Ware put things in place to buy the team when the time was right for Stringer to move on, and Millican has been nothing but complimentary of Stringer as an owner and doing what was best for himself.

Ware, however, has brought new possibilities to the table for Millican and the team. The operation is based in the Ware shop in Mooresville, N.C., instead of the drag racing hub of Indianapolis. Even so, some of the Stringer team stayed intact and has grown within the new iteration.

“They’ve come a long way,” Millican said. “We have more inventory and more parts and pieces. Not that we go out there and blow it up, but when you have the freedom of knowing if you do mess up, we’ve got more parts in the trailer, it makes it where the crew chief is not biting his fingernails like, ‘Oh, if I mess this up, we can’t make the next run.’ And I love Doug Stringer, that’s no knock on him. But RWR has brought some more resources than we’ve never had before, and he can continue to bring more.”

Millican is quick to point out and continually reiterate that people make the difference. And that will be the key to his and Rick Ware Racing’s hunt for the Top Fuel championship.

“It all comes down to people, and if you get good people, you get good results,” Millican said. “That’s all there is to it. One of the coolest things is that no matter who makes a mistake, we don’t point fingers, and I think that’s big. We know when we make a mistake. When it’s me, I point it out. But I will say, when somebody on the team makes a mistake, they’ll hold their hand up, and that makes a big difference, especially for the tuners.

“What Rick has assembled here is pretty dang cool. He’s a hands-on guy, but at the same time, he picks people and lets them do what they feel like needs to be done and it’s paid off.”