Momentum was rolling for Matt Hagan with back-to-back wins until the last two races in Denver and Sonoma, Calif., where he managed to post just one round win.

Hagan, who is piloting the Sandvik Coromant Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, is trying to regain some of his championship-winning form and he took a step in that direction Friday at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Wash., near Seattle.

Hagan, who drives for Don Schumacher Racing, clocked a 3.913-second lap at 324.75 mph in the second qualifying session to capture the top spot.

“We had a really good run (4.008 seconds) in the first qualifying session and that’s why it put us back in the pack to be able to make those decisions,” Hagan said. “This new Hellcat body is running really good, running better than we are trying to run with it. I think he (his crew chief Dickie Venables) is trying to run about a 93 or so just to make sure we go down and have a good qualifying position on Sunday. It has just been really good. We have been really impressed with the aerodynamics and everything else with the car.”

Hagan, whose team debuted the Hellcat body in Denver (July 20-22), is upbeat that his team is campaigning the Sandvik body this weekend.

“We seem to do really well with the Sandvik body,” Hagan said. “I don’t know what it is, but we won two races with those guys and we are trying to another one in the win column for them and this was a great way to do it (Friday).”

Hagan arrived in Seattle fourth in points and he’s keep things in perspective as the six-race Countdown to the Championship looms. Seattle is race 16 of 24 this season in the Mello Yello Series.

“I don’t really care where I’m at (in the points),” Hagan said. “I’ve won two championships from the No. 6 and No. 7 spot, so I I just want to be in the top 10. Everybody wants to be 1 or 2 but show me someone who has gone in No. 1 and won a championship in the last five or six years. At the end of the day, we just have to be in and we have to get focused and get hot at the end of the season and two or three of those races out of the six. That’s really what matters. Right now, it is about dialing the car in and about dialing this new body in with our headers and everything else we are doing, and it is just going to take a few runs. But, all in all, I think Dickie has a pretty good handle on it and the drivability of the race car is really good. We are able to take a lot less drag off the car and it is just responding to what I want to do out there and we are really happy.”