Sometimes drag-racing performance at Bandimere Speedway is unpredictable. It wasn’t Friday in Funny Car qualifying.

Courtney Force, who has started from the top position at eight of the season’s first 13 races, continues to have the upper hand on the rest of the class – even though she didn’t start off with a pass under full power and followed with a run punctuated by what she called “a hiccup.”

She picked up three-hundredths of a second from her initial qualifying pass Friday night to reclaim the provisional Funny Car lead from teammate Robert Hight on the opening day of the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals.

Force covered the 1,000-foot course at Morrison, Colo., near Denver, in 3.966 seconds at 322.73 mph in the evening. She led the first session with a 3.995-second elapsed time at 281.60 mph. Hight, last year’s winner of this race, had the tentative No. 1 spot for a few minutes with his second pass of the day at 3.986, 321.58.

The two John Force Racing drivers were the only ones to record sub-four-second runs Friday, but the trio of drivers was 1-2-3 at the end of the day. Boss John Force was third at 4.007 seconds. His E.T. was identical to that of Ron Capps, but Force was faster (322.27 mph to 320.81).

“To come out to Denver to kick off the Western Swing, it feels great to have two solid passes, picking up six bonus points,” the driver of the Advance Auto Parts Camaro said. “To be completely honest, we didn’t even get a full pull in Q1. It started to spin down there [toward the finish line] and [I] got out of it. But I still managed to run a 3.99, which was very impressive by [crew chiefs] Brian Corradi and Dan Hood and the entire Advance Auto Parts guys.”

Her second pass, Force said, wasn’t perfect, either.

“We had a small hiccup down there. It kind of exploded on me,” Force said. “It happened right in the lights, but we were able to get the E.T. we wanted, and the speed. So it feels good to be able to pick up some more points.

“I loved hearing JFR is 1-2-3,” she said. “Things are a lot different when you come to track like this with this [thin] air, and you have to make those adjustments. My team has done a great job, making those adjustments. It’s a great start for all of our teams this weekend. But we’ve got a, long way to go. We definitely want to end up in that winners circle and hopefully keep that points lead.”

Force has won four times this year (Phoenix, Atlanta, Topeka, Richmond), but she’s especially determined this weekend because she lost in the opening round at the previous race, at Epping, N.H.

Her Friday performance wasn’t enough to top her own track records. She set both ends of the mark last July at 3.889 seconds and 328.30 mph.

Force said she would love to sweep the Western Swing – three races in consecutive weekends with thousands of miles between venues and three different conditions – but is trying focus on matters at hand. As a child she watched her father become the lone Funny Car racer ever to accomplish the sweep. “It would be amazing. That’s a dream streak right there. You’ve got to make things happen here in Denver if you want a shot at it.”

Cruz Pedregon was unable to recover from a major first-session engine explosion and sat out the evening run. Past half-track his Snap-on Tools Toyota Camry engine let go, blowing pieces of the body into the air. That oildown cost him 15 points in the standings, but he’s 12th in the provisional line-up.

Tim Wilkerson sits on the bump spot overnight with a 4.952-second E.T.  No. 17 Jim Campbell has two Saturday chances to qualify for the field.