Angelle Sampey keeps on battling to stay in NHRA’s Pro Stock Motorcycle world championship hunt.

Sampey, riding a Vance & Hines Suzuki, blazed to a 6.728-second elapsed time at 202.05 mph on Friday and that remained in the No. 1 qualifying position after the preliminary sessions concluded Saturday at the Texas NHRA FallNationals at the Texas Motorplex near Dallas.

Sampey arrived in Dallas seventh in the points standings – 116 behind leader Matt Smith.

“Yes, that was a really good run for us,” Sampey said. “We have the motorcycle to win the race, as we always do, every weekend. I just hope and pray that my team has the rider to win the race. That's what I always shoot for, being the best I can be on race day. The competition makes it pretty tough. It's fierce out here these days. Just getting past first round is always a task, and if you can go all four rounds on Sunday, you're usually mentally exhausted at the end of the day. As I have said about 32 times after I won in (Norwalk) Ohio.

“But I'm just looking forward to a good day. I'm hoping that the weather can stay clear for us. I know my team's ready for a win. I know Eddie (Krawiec) is wanting one as well, so he'll be the one trying to knock down my door. But it's going to be also Matt, and Angie (Smith), and everybody else trying to stop us. But I'm just going to try to keep my head straight, have a good time, enjoy the day, and look forward to putting on that cowboy hat on my head at the end of the day for the first time, since I've never done that yet.”

This is Sampey’s fifth No. 1 qualifier of the season and the 58th of her decorated career.

Sampey closed out qualifying in Q4 with the quickest run of the session at 6.759 seconds at 201.03 mph.

“It definitely gives you the boost that you need,” Sampey said about her Q4 lap. “Going into race day, making mistakes is never good. It's like you just want to remember what you did last when you were on the bike. Knowing that I made it perfectly straight down the racetrack with that strong crosswind going. My shift points were right on. Going into Sunday, I know what we're capable of. Just going to focus on cutting good lights, decent lights, being consistent on that, and doing my job with driving. The motorcycle is plenty quick enough to win the race. If I just do a good job driving it, we should have that cowboy hat at the end of the day. I'm going to talk about the cowboy hat a lot because I want the cowboy hat.”

In Q3, Sampey shut off early and she explained why.

“When I left, it went right and then it just continued to go right,” she said. “The crosswind was actually pulling to the left, but I think we had it adjusted to fight the crosswind. Sometimes when the bike leaves, it'll do a little kick out on me. Like I said, I haven't really looked at everything yet, but I'm sure that's probably what happened. It might have kicked out a little bit, started heading to the right. I did jump off the left to fix it, but I'm not always heavy enough to pull it back. I manage to keep it straight enough to get most of the way down the track. But once it gets past a certain point, I know that now I'm just putting myself and the motorcycle at risk. And I'm already low for number one qualifier, I have enough of the run for them to get what they need for tuning and data. So, I just chose all on my own to roll off the throttle. I could have made it to the finish line safely, I'm sure, I just chose to not do it. They had plenty enough of what they needed to see.”

Sampey, who faces Ryan Oehler in round one, acknowledged she is her own worst critic.

“That's just the mistakes I've been making so many races in a row that I've done something to cause us to lose the race,” Sampey said about why she has been so hard on herself lately. It's hard to not think about the mistakes. The worst thing to do is to harp on the mistakes and keep thinking about them. You get into a quicksand, and you keep making them. I'm not trying to harp on them, I'm trying to learn from them though. So, I want to remind myself of what I've done wrong and how to do it right. I want to keep thinking in a positive way, but that's what it is. After you've made so many mistakes and start feeling guilty that I'm the one holding my team back. It's definitely not my team, it's not my Suzuki, it's been me. And so, I'm going to keep trying to fix that. And I think I've been doing a pretty good job of dealing with it.

“I'm very hard on myself, I'm very emotional. So, if it happens, at the last race it happened, I did a good job of not getting completely emotional and out of control and down on myself. I went back to my trailer, I thought about what I did wrong, I thought about how to fix it. Then my mindset was instantly, ‘What am I going to do between this race and next to get even better?’ And then I'd go home and there's certain things I do to work on my skills riding and I feel like I'm getting better. I just have to try to be perfect. And it's hard to be perfect, but that's what it takes these days in our sport. All the teams and all the categories are so amazing that you cannot be a slacker anymore. You can still accidentally win a race every once in a while, but it's not probable. All the stars have to align, and I have to be on point just like my team and my motorcycle is. That’s what I focus on."