What a difference a year can make.

In his last visit to the Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona - a rare pandemic-delayed summer trip to the southern California track - Justin Ashley had to be helped from his 11,000-horsepower dragster in one of the most disappointing days of his young career.

On that day nearly seven months ago, Ashley reached the finals of the Winternationals, but as he pulled into the burnout box in front of the Pomona timing tower preparing to take on Leah Pruett, the young racer succumbed to heat exhaustion and had to be helped from his machine.

It was a heartbreaking ordeal for the second-year competitor, but one that he vowed to learn from as he returns to the track this weekend.

“It obviously wasn’t a good experience when I was out here last time, but I think the worst thing I could have done is not learn from it,” Ashley said. “So lesson learned and now that is in the rear-view mirror. If anything, I think it has provided me extra motivation to be here today. I want to be here and I want to conquer this racetrack and this is a good start. This is how we wanted to start the season.”

Good start indeed.

Ashley wheeled his newly minted Phillips Connect dragster to a career-best 3.676-second pass at 331.45 miles per hour Friday evening during the first round of qualifying at the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals presented by ProtectTheHarvest.com. If his time holds, it will be the first No. 1 qualifier for the driver entering his third year behind the wheel.

“That felt great. You have this whole offseason and it is relatively quick. It is two months, but at the end of the day it feels like it has been forever. So it is exciting just to be able to get back in the racecar,” Ashley said. “When you are able to go down there on the first run of the new season and go right to the top and run as good as we did in front of our new sponsor, that is exactly what we are looking for and a good way to kick off the weekend.”

Ashley had a tremendous side-by-side battle with Mike Salinas for the provisional pole position Friday evening as the driver of the Scrappers Racing dragster slotted his machine in second behind Ashley with an equally-impressive 3.677 at 329.02 mph. With new crew chief Rob Flynn calling the shots, Salinas backed up his top three finish in the final championship standings last year with a great run to start the new campaign.

Brittany Force, who dominated much of last season’s qualifying efforts, placed her Monster Energy machine in third with a 3.722 at 332.10 mph. Defending series champion Steve Torrence (3.725) and Doug Kalitta (3.733) round out the top five.

“This is probably the best Top Fuel field in at least a decade. To be able to qualify No. 1 would be amazing,” Ashley said. “We still have tomorrow to go, and we have a lot of really good cars behind us that are going to try and improve. But our Phillips Connect team is going to try and do exactly the same thing. We have to take it one qualifying round at a time and see where we end up at the end of the day.”

In addition to the strong start on Friday, a number of offseason developments have added to the buzz surrounding Ashley’s 2022 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series Top Fuel campaign.

Ashley added Phillips Connect as a sponsor backed by executive vice president Jim Epler, the first professional driver to break the 300 mph barrier in a Funny Car. Additionally, Ashley has a new partnership with Antron Brown and his new race team, giving Ashley invaluable expertise from an impressive stable of racers.

“It is critical for our Phillips Connect team and for (Antron’s) Matco Tools team. You are only as good as the people you surround yourself with and we continue to surround ourselves with good people,” Ashley said. “Our team is doing a fantastic job and his team is doing a fantastic job. Just to be able to be teammates with a guy like Antron really is a privilege.

“All of these teams and sponsors are coming back (to the sport) for a reason. NHRA just offers such a great platform for businesses to be able to work together. We are very fortunate to have Phillips Connect onboard and the neat part about it is Jim Epler. The reason why it is so great to have him involved is because he knows how the sport works on the track and off.”

The final piece to the puzzle was a solid round of testing in Phoenix one week ago, giving the team newfound confidence entering the season.

“I think we did a really good job of running well last year, but we really wanted to take that next step this year and a big part of that was improving the 60-foot time,” Ashley said. “When you have a good 60-foot time, generally it leads to good things down the track and that is what happened here.”

Ashley, whose previous best qualifying effort was second in Dallas in 2020, will look to earn that first top qualifier award with two more passes on Saturday.