Kaiser, who trails Top Fuel point leader and defending series champion Tyler Hilton by 48 points, got off to a strong start in Friday’s first session with a 5.742 run to take the provisional top spot. Tyler Hester sits second with a 5.768.

“It didn’t even leave hard and never really pulled, and I came back and the clutch was totally coming apart again,” Kaiser said. “The discs, all the pads were gone on two of the discs. Just really frustrated with this clutch disc problem right now. A lot of people are having it, and it’s definitely made its way into Heritage Series racing. It should have run about a .66 or .68, really.”

Karstetter leads the Fuel Altered division — the group closest to the 6.00 index — with a 6.052-second pass at 256.11 mph. Matthew Leonard (6.125) and Mark Whynaught (6.149) round out the top three.

“Yesterday [Thursday], we had our front end out of whack and a few things,” Karstetter said. “We scaled the car today. It was kind of out of balance, and we’re working through it. That was the seventh run we’ve made on the car, so we’re learning from scratch. But we’re working on all the bugs, and it’s coming around now.

“The motor’s happy, everything was totally happy, and we ran it really soft. Now I can drive the car. The steering wheel’s straight, the tires are straight, and we’re ready to rock and roll, so everything’s looking really good.”

Qualifying concludes Saturday in all three nitro divisions, with Funny Car eliminations beginning later in the day following one final qualifying session.