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"I'm not knocking IHRA here, either," Kloeber continued. "They run a good, tight little program and in some ways it shows in certain aspects of our running NHRA races. It's a great place to learn how to run a Top Fueler, not so much in my case because I've been tuning for a fairly long time, but you always pick up something as you go along. With both organizations running the same rules, your knowledge isn't interfered with. You've just got one target to contend with."

His adjustment to one tune-up status went over well based on his first two efforts this year. On Friday of the NHRA Winternationals, Millican took over the number one spot with a blistering personal best of 4.52/326.79, a number that held as the pole until a dramatic final-qualifying battle with Doug Kalitta. Millican got the jump on the Mac Tools car and was cruising at half track when Kalitta stormed by with a 4.48/332.18 at three-quarter track. Millican's run was nothing to sneeze at as he carded a 4.55/325.53. The team didn't win Pomona, but they did make it to the semi's and improved on their best speed with a 328.62-mph speed in round two.

At the NHRA stop in Phoenix, Millican qualified fourth with a 4.54/327.43 and made it to round two where he lost a reasonably close 4.53 to 4.59 duel to NHRA champ Dixon.

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Again, Kloeber said that the task is made easier when you are playing by one set of rules, but he also added another proviso. "We had a handle on the IHRA tune-up last year, no mistake about that. One of the big reasons was the supercharger. I am a big fan of the Bill Miller/Tim Gibson blower and think they are the best on the market. Miller quit making them, so I went out and bought up every one of them I could find. I was originally introduced to them by Clayton Harris, who tuned Paul Romine to the 2000 IHRA championship, and was sold right away. If you're going to be dealing with different blower percentages, the blower is one of the most crucial areas of the car.

"Miller said that this year he is going to produce a limited amount of new blowers for his established customers from the past and I'm fortunate enough to be in that group. That and our new car should make for a hopefully successful year in 2003."

During the winter, Kloeber got together with friend Brad Hadman, one of the country's premier chassis builders, on a new car and went to work on a dragster that represents solid changes from the previous season.

"Brad's ideas are extensions of ideas from his old boss (the late) Al Swindahl," Kloeber explained. "He's an aggressive builder and I'm an aggressive tuner and we just gelled in the building of this car. The cockpit is different, we are going with a tall body, but without a tall nose, the weight been distributed differently, and there are a number of tricks that I can't go into, but these first two races this season have confirmed that our ideas this winter were on the right track."

Even officialdom thought so as NHRA threw the Werner Enterprises team $1,000 in pocket change and the Best Engineered Car award at the Arizona race.

The only downside to any of this is that Kloeber says that they will again concentrate on IHRA. Plans call for attendance at only from six to 10 NHRA races, and again this is due to budgetary constraints. Car owner Peter Lehman is beating the bushes for an associate sponsor or two so that they can someday make a real charge at the NHRA championship.

Today Top Fuel competition has become appallingly one-sided. Who were the four Top Fuel semifinalists at Firebird Int'l Raceway? Just 2002 finishers 1 through 4. It would be nice to see a new set of faces show up in the winner's circle, and this is a subject I'm openly prejudiced on. If there's anyone around who can break up the Dixon, Bernstein, Schumacher, Kalitta monotony, it'll be a high energy Tennessee driver, a low-key owner, and their tuner and master juggler (at least last year) Mike Kloeber.

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