Qualifying has been a specialty for Courtney Force this season.

The popular driver of the Advance Auto Parts nitro Funny Car continued that trend Friday.

Force clocked a 3.862-second elapsed time at 331.12 mph, which was a track record ET, to capture the provisional No. 1 spot at the Summernationals in Englishtown, N.J.

“Going to the top spot that time was a lot less exciting than last weekend, which I’m more than happy about,” said Force, who was the provisional No. 1 qualifier in Epping, N.H., last Friday and had an engine explosion. “It was great (Friday). Pulling out a spare car and running it this weekend and getting the top spot (Friday) really makes me give props to my guys, especially our fab shop guys back in Brownsburg, Ind. They deserve a lot of credit and they definitely don’t get enough of it.”

Force has been the No. 1 qualifier four times this season – at Las Vegas, Houston, Charlotte and Atlanta. Her worst qualifying position in nine races this year was fourth at Gainesville.

“We will see if we can hold on to the top spot (Saturday), but I’m really proud of my team,” Force said. “We made great runs in Englishtown and I hope we can hold on to the No. 1 spot. I’m not complaining about running our spare car, especially when we have the No. 1 qualifying spot. I know it is going to be tough to be able to run the same kind of numbers (Saturday) as we did (Friday) because it’s going to be so much hotter. Being that it is going to be a hot track, it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of numbers these cars will run.”

Force acknowledged she and her team need to build on Friday’s momentum.

“(Saturday) is a really important day for us,” she said. “We might be in the No. 1 spot now, but we need to get the car down (the track) during the heat because that’s the conditions we are going to have during race day.”