For most drivers, falling short of your goals and battling through multiple issues during a qualifying pass means accepting a spot lower on the grid and starting over the following day.

But for NHRA Funny Car championship contender Robert Hight, even imperfection is still good enough to be No. 1.

Despite not reaching the very achievable goal of a new national record Friday night, Hight still placed the AAA Missouri Chevrolet Camaro Funny Car in the provisional top spot at the sixth annual AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals at Gateway Motorsports Park.

Hight ran a 3.830-second elapsed time at 333.91 mph as he seeks his seventh top qualifier award of the season.

“It’s a lot of fun to just sit back and watch my team work. You know what they are up against when conditions are like this. No one is really talking, they are focused on what they are doing and they are trying to make a record run,” said Hight, who had a 338.60 mph pass in the first qualifying session on Friday as he chases the 340 mph barrier in the class. “We were pushing it tonight to run better than an 83 and trying to run 340 miles per hour. The conditions were there, it just didn’t work out.”

Hight topped both qualifying sessions on Friday, running a 3.845 in Q1 to earn six valuable bonus points on day one at the Midwest Nationals. Still, Hight was disappointed not to dip even lower during the night session.

“It’s one of those things where there are so many components on these nitro cars that they just have to work in sync with each other and everything has to be perfect to put a number like that on the board,” Hight said. “Everything has to be perfect for it to run numbers like that. And tonight, our clutch didn’t wear like it was supposed to. It put a cylinder out down track. So Jimmy Prock came over to us and said, ‘I guess we ‘ought to be happy. When you don’t make a perfect run and you are still No. 1 that shows we are doing something.’ And he’s right. We got six more points today and that’s what we are here for.”

Robert Hight’s teammate and JFR bossman John Force is qualified second with a 3.832 at 334.65 mph, while current points leader and defending class champion Ron Capps sits third with a 3.849 at 332.51 mph. Alexis DeJoria (3.863) and Jack Beckman (3.873) round out the top five.

If Hight’s time holds on Saturday - and he believes it will - it will be Hights 56th career No. 1 start and the 13th time in the last 14 races he has qualified in the top three spots.

“I believe it will hold. We ran an 84 on the first run so we were shooting for quite a bit better than an 83. If you had everything right I think you could have run an 80 flat, maybe a 79 out there and we just didn’t do it,” Hight said. “It is supposed to be a little cooler tomorrow, but we run earlier. You never know, the track could get down to 100 degrees that second session and you might get another shot at the 340. But I don’t think 3.83 is going to get nipped.”