J.R. Todd isn’t surrendering his NHRA Mello Series world championship without a fight.

With two races left in the season, Todd, who drives the DHL-sponsored Toyota for Kalitta Motorsports, entered the Dodge NHRA Nationals presented by Pennzoil at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend in seventh place in the points standings 163 points behind leader Robert Hight.

Todd kept in the championship hunt by capturing the provisional qualifying spot with a 3.856-second elapsed time with a 333.58 mph.

Success for Todd at The Strip has become common place as he has won three consecutive races at the track since the start of the 2018 season.

“Todd Smith and Jon O (Oberhofer, Todd’s crew chiefs) keep some really good notes obviously from this place,” Todd said. “Like I keep saying, since Jeff Foster and his guys have redone the lanes here it seems like it really played to their tune-up. That was a big run, but I didn’t think it would hold up for No. 1 with Robert (Hight) and John (Force) behind us. It did and we will see how the conditions are (Saturday), but either way that’s going keep us toward the top five I would think. That’s good going into Sunday more than anything, we can just go to work (Saturday) on what we need to do Sunday.”

The 2019 NHRA Mello Yello Series season concludes with the Vegas race this weekend and then the season finale – the Auto Club NHRA Finals, Nov. 14-17 in Pomona, Calif. In Pomona, the points-and-a-half system will be in play allowing drivers to make up more ground.

Todd has 15 career No. 1 qualifying positions – 12 in Top Fuel and three in nitro Funny Car.

“I want to keep the streak,” said Todd about his winning ways at The Strip in Las Vegas. “If we win, we have four in and a row and we need to go out and win the next two races no matter what. We can’t control what the guys in front of us are going to do. But if they slip up and we win these next two it could be exciting there in Pomona Sunday evening. Just look at our past success at what we have done at this track and then what we did last year. I definitely have confidence in my team and the crew chiefs, they have a good handle on things right now. I feel like we had a car capable of winning in Dallas we just got picked off there in second round by a matter of inches. I think if we would have got past (Matt) Hagan, we really had a good chance of winning that race and that would have put in better position coming into here (Las Vegas), but we can’t control what those guys in front of us do. We need to go out and do the best we can for DHL and Toyota, and we have the 50th anniversary wrap for the next two races and hopefully that is our good luck charm.”