Before Sunday, J.R.Todd had never beaten reigning world champion Robert Hight in NHRA nitro Funny Car eliminations in four attempts.

That’s not the case anymore.

Todd, who pilots the DHL machine for Kalitta Motorsports, defeated Hight in the final round of the SpringNationals near Houston Sunday.

Todd clocked a 3.955-second time at 313.29 mph to upend Hight’s 3.993-second effort at 308.14 mph.

This is Todd’s second national event win in a row as he also won the Four-Wide event in Las Vegas. Todd now has 13 career national event wins - nine in Top Fuel and four in Funny Car. This is Todd’s second season driving a Funny Car.

“It’s nice to have this much momentum early in the season, because we struggled really bad last year,” Todd said. “We didn’t really turn around our season until probably the Western Swing. I feel like we started picking up momentum around Denver last year, and then we fell on our faces again. It’s nice to come out swinging like we are and winning races. That definitely makes Connie (Kalitta) happy and it keeps team morale up. It’s good all around. I didn’t expect to have this kind of success (in a Funny Car) especially this early in the season.”

With his latest win, Todd moved up to sixth in the point standings.

“It is nice to keep moving up in the points,” he said. “It feels like every year I have been out here competing in the Countdown I’ve always been in or around the cut line. Hopefully, we can keep this going, and stay up there in points. That would be nice.”

Todd’s victory parade Sunday consisted of wins over Tommy Johnson Jr., Jeff Diehl, Tim Wilkerson and Hight.

“I’m just happy to get a win,” Todd said. “We show up every weekend trying to get a win and we will take them however we can get them.”

Todd did acknowledge he truly appreciates getting to be a part of the Kalitta Motorsports team, which also consists of Funny Car driver Shawn Langdon and Top Fuel drivers Doug Kalitta and Richie Crampton.

“These guys are all my buddies and we can bounce information off each other and we have each other’s back,” Todd said. “It is awesome to work with a team like Kalitta Motorsports. All the crew chiefs get along and work well together and I think that is a big key to our success, especially with two Funny Cars.”

Throughout qualifying Todd didn’t look like the driver to beat Sunday.

“We couldn’t get our car to run good enough early,” Todd said. “You really needed to find as much power early as you could in the run before you got on the asphalt because you knew it was going to spin the tires out there and there was really nothing you could do about it. We didn’t qualify as well as we wanted to but we went down the track three out of four runs in qualifying. We just missed it there Friday night. We are getting to that point in the season where the night run is crucial just to get your qualifying spot. But, I feel like the runs we made in the heat in qualifying helped us (Sunday).”