Victory has eluded Justin Milliken in the Myrtle Beach 400 in 12 previous attempts. Now, Milliken is heading to Myrtle Beach Speedway’s marquee event for the 13th time with hopes of finally scoring the one win that has eluded him.
Despite his past success at Myrtle Beach Speedway, which includes a track championship in 2011, the Myrtle Beach 400 has not been kind to Milliken. Milliken, 35, from Shallotte, North Carolina has only scored one top-five finish in the Myrtle Beach 400 but the veteran racer believes this is his year.
“I feel like we’ve got as good a shot now as we’ve had in a long time and better than most,” Milliken said. “I feel really good about it. We’ve put on everything that we had on our car when we tested it on the 35 that won this past weekend. I feel pretty good about it. We’ve been working hard doing offseason testing getting ready for this race.”
The frustrations have mounted up during the years. Milliken finished seventh last year but, in the years prior, he’s been involved in accidents, suffered from mechanical problems and even been wrecked out for the win.
“It’s so frustrating,” Milliken stated. “This year, we’ve won the most races out of anybody at Myrtle Beach. Most years, it is like that. We always have a good car and have our A-game and we just come up, something breaks, we get wrecked, end up upside-down and on fire, late race restart, something every year.
“It is frustrating but it gives us something to talk about and work towards.”
The competition at the Myrtle Beach 400 is usually elite, but has been even moreso in recent years. Lee Pulliam, Travis Swaim and Myatt Snider are the three most recent winners of the race – with last year’s race featuring a thrilling duel between Snider, Tommy Lemons, Jr. and Lee Pulliam.
That competition is something Milliken welcomes.
“I looked at the list of recent winners and four of the last five are races we gave away,” Milliken explained. “I love racing against the competition. It seems like a luck deal to be honest. I was tickled to death last year to finish the race. We finished seventh, had a good car all weekend. I was just happy to finish because, the last five years, we have to rebuild the car over the winter. We finally got the monkey off our shoulder and finished the race.”
Milliken already has one big win during Speedweeks 2016 at Myrtle Beach Speedway. Last weekend, he was the crew chief for Terry Evans in the Renegade Race Fuels 100. Evans inherited the win, a win he was deserving of in 2015.
“It was a big win,” Milliken remarked. “I was so happy for Terry to get some vindication from lsat year. We should have won that race last year. We should have won it two years in a row so, for him to get some vindication.
“Terry helps me. I was so happy for him. I was happy to be a part of winning that race. It was one of the biggest wins of my career and I wasn’t even driving. To be able to win something that felt like we won last year, that said for our small team of volunteers, we put quality stuff on the racetrack.”
Milliken scored three wins at Myrtle Beach Speedway in 2016 and finished second in points to Matt Cox. Now, he is hoping to finish one position better in Saturday’s Myrtle Beach 400.
