Larry Dixon earned his second consecutive pole position, taking the top stop in Top Fuel for the ACDelco NHRA Gatornationals with a 3.886 second, 308.28 mile per hour run, a strong .076 seconds faster than Spencer Massey.
 
Dixon started the season in Pomona with a DNQ (Did Not Qualify) but has ruled the qualifying roost since. It has been, according the humble driver to be, “feast or famine.”
 
Unsure if his Friday time would hold up, Dixon revealed the team got exactly what they wanted out of the race car in the final run.
 
“The car ran good, obviously the last two or three runs they've been looking to try and run an 80 and it hadn't. I'm glad they found it. I thought it was take an 80-something to stay on the pole and I'm just glad it came from us.”
 
Dixon will face 16th qualifier and Pomona winner Doug Kalitta in the opening round. For Dixon, who he faces in the first round is not as important as his goal each time he races.
 
“I just hope for four win lights,” said the Van Nuys, Calif., native who now makes his home in Avon, Ind. “If you going to attempt to win an event you have to race everybody anyway. Whether its first round, third round, final round you have to be on your game every round. We'll just have to start off the day well.”
 
While the pundits and followers of the sport believe Dixon should expect to perform well, given he’s the driver for Alan Johnson, the former crew chief who won four Top Fuel titles with Tony Schumacher, turned car owner. Dixon doesn't expect instant success; he just expects to do his job.
 
“No, I'm not that kind of guy,” he says. “You just go in there, you put in your work, everybody else puts it in. Obviously, what they had last year was a great package; a historic package. To expect that, that's not my m.o. I don't think like that. Everybody just does their thing and if it all lines up right you get to see the results.”
 
The pole secure, it’s a waiting game for driver and team as to what it will take to win on a track that appeared to as quickly as the weather changed from sunny to partly cloudy.
 
“I think, my opinion is, is that it will have to do more with the weather conditions than anything. Today, in the first session we had more clear skies and it put more heat on the track and then on the afternoon session there was more cloud cover and it gave the track a little bit more grip. How I look at it, you see the pro stock cars and the bikes and their running really well, so you know the air is good. It's just a matter of whether the fuel cars can grip the track. You're always relying on grip to be able to put the number down.”