Just two rounds.

That is all that stood between Drew Skillman and a potential sweep of the Western Swing as the young racer earned his second win of the three-race west coast stretch on Sunday with a victory over Erica Enders at the 30th annual NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways. The result afforded Skillman his third total win in the last four races and sixth of his career as the driver of the Ray Skillman Chevrolet Camaro continues to peak at just the right time.

“We really thought we were going to sweep the swing,” a disappointed Skillman said. “We really thought we had the car to do it and I missed it by two rounds. But we made up for it here. Everyone at Gray Motorsports has provided us with great power and our teams are working really well together. Ray Skillman Motorsports has been kicking butt, so I really can’t complain.”

Skillman earned career win number six on Sunday with a power play on his former teammate. In the final, Enders left first, but Skillman made up the difference by the time the cars passed the Christmas tree and he was able to pull away to the tune of a 6.604-second pass at 209.33 mph in a tremendous drag race. Enders, in her fourth final of the year, had a 6.609 at 209.49 mph.

“I had a really good car this weekend. The driver was not the best, but my team carried me to the finals,” Skillman said. “In the final we actually got lucky. I’m pretty calm in the car, nothing really phases me, and in that race I was trying to kill the tree and apparently I did not. I was really shallow and missed it by a hair. Erica is one of the best leavers in the country and luckily she missed it too.”

Skillman added wins over Bo Butner and Alan Prusiensky to reach his fourth final of the year. Enders, meanwhile, eliminated Skillman’s teammate, Tanner Gray, along with Jason Line and Matt Hartford.

And both young racers had to overcome some unusual weather conditions to get the job done, with unseasonably warm temperatures mixing with a heavy cloud of smoke from wildfires burning hundreds of miles north.

“We were concerned about the high temperatures. This track doesn’t have a lot of heat on it, so we don’t really know what it is going to do when it gets hot and this track held up beautifully,” Skillman said. “This track was really good all weekend. I never had a bad run where you could blame the track.”

While Skillman couldn’t lay claim to only the second-ever sweep of the Western Swing by a Pro Stock driver, his team at Gray Motorsports can. While Skillman won the first and third legs of the trifecta, Tanner Gray added a win in the middle last weekend in Sonoma, as Gray Motorsports has now surpassed KB Racing for the most wins in the category this season with seven.

It is a unique dynamic, as Skillman’s own team uses Gray Motorsports horsepower in their cars. But while not a team in the traditional sense, it isn’t any different on the information sharing and teamwork side of things.

“We are actually a team. We are awning-to-awning. We share all of our data. They have every run we have and we have every run they have. They talk to everyone in the morning, we even flip coins for tires sometimes. We share everything,” Skillman said.

With the team as a whole having won four-straight races, Skillman is ready to move forward having climbed from eighth one month ago to fifth in the championship standings with just two races remaining before the Countdown to the Championship gets underway in September.

“We are just passionate about what we do. It is what we love to do. I’m a racer. That is why I am here. I don’t do this for a living. I do this to have fun and be around my guys and we come here to win,” Skillman said. “With that said, we have some stuff in the pipeline that should be very, very good for the Countdown. We should definitely be at the top of the page every time.”