This season has been one of resurgence for five-time NHRA Pro Stock world championship Jeg Coughlin Jr.

The momentum Coughlin has generated thus far in 2018 continued at the 31st annual CatSpot NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways near Seattle.

Coughlin powered his Chevy Camaro to the No. 1 qualifying spot with a 6.501-second elapsed time at 212.16 mph. The time came in the second qualifying session Friday and held through Saturday.

“I feel pretty good (going into race day),” Coughlin said. “The first run we made (Saturday) we were third in the session. We were experiment a little bit with some different components on the car (Saturday). I thought we would refine that the for the last run and I didn’t make too good a run personally behind the wheel. I think we will use that as an attention getter and little motivation going into game day tomorrow and be on our toes ready to race and race aggressively.”

This was Coughlin’s second No. 1 qualifying position of the season – the first was Norwalk, Ohio. This is his 25th career No. 1 qualifying position in Pro Stock. He has three wins this season, including the last race in Sonoma, Calif. Coughlin came to Seattle fifth in the points.

“What we tried today worked pretty well, we were happy with Q3 when we went 55.0 and low was 54.5 so that part we were pretty happy with,” Coughlin said. “Q4, I just didn’t drive very well from behind the wheel I was on the limiter in the first couple of gears. If you’re going to make a mistake in a drag race you want to make it in the last foot not the first foot. I certainly made a couple early in the run that stunted our ET. We will shake that off and I think Rick and Rickie (Jones) will be just fine tuning the tune-up from today and key off what we did today and be ready for tomorrow.”

Coughlin faces Joey Grose in round one.