Despite six wins this season and a runaway lead in the Top Fuel standings, Justin Ashley found out Saturday that even he can still be surprised.

With the field seemingly set entering the final qualifying session Saturday and on a day when few improved at Brainerd International Raceway, Ashley hit a fastball right out of the park with a blistering 3.746-second lap at 328.14 mph in his Phillips Connect dragster to take a surprise No. 1 at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals.

Ashley entered the third and final qualifying session sixth on the ladder. But while the five cars in front of him were unable to better their times from Q1, Ashley found enough speed to power to the top of the class and earn his second top qualifier award of the season.

“That’s a stout run with the conditions,” Ashley said. “Nothing necessarily surprises me with the team that we have with Mike Green and Tommy DeLago, but nonetheless it was going to be tough to go out there and run as well as we did. It really speaks volumes of our team. It is a unique situation because I’m not sure how much of that you can actually take and apply tomorrow because it’s going to be cooler, but nonetheless what we did was at least position ourselves the best that we can heading into race day.”

With Ashley taking over atop the field, Doug Kalitta dropped a notch to second with his 3.757 at 330.31 mph from Friday. Steve Torrence also slipped a spot to third with 3.758 at 328.54 mph, while Brittany Force (3.762) and Leah Pruett (3.777) made up the rest of the top five.

While Saturday’s powerhouse run was a surprise for the conditions, in the grand scheme of the season there was nothing surprising about Ashley’s continued success. Ashley is currently riding a two-race win streak and has six total wins on the season, though it is only his second No. 1 of the season and first since Pomona in April.

“I definitely feel like we’re in a really good place,” Ashley said. “I think the most important thing is that we’re staying on offense. We’re staying aggressive. We don’t want to become conservative at all. We want to continue to move forward and the best way that we can do that is to take each and every lap, whether it is good, bad or somewhere in between, and learn from that and continue to grow. Because once these points reset (for the Countdown to the Championship), we have people right now nipping at our heels.”

Perhaps the only negative Ashley can take away from Saturday’s performance is a loss in the first round of the specialty Mission 2Fast2Tasty Challenge to eventual winner Antron Brown. Ashley, who has collected a number of bonus points in the Challenge this season, said that those points are crucial as the season shifts into the Countdown at Maple Grove (Pa.) Raceway one month from now.

“Those points are so important,” Ashley said. “Round points are obviously the most important, but these bonus points are just so critical and they’re really going to add up. With the Mission deal, and the fact that it’s after the points reset makes it that much more significant.”

Despite Saturday’s success, there is little the team can take away that can be applied on race day. With cooler conditions in the forecast, Ashley said that with what the team was able to do in the heat, he has high hopes that his team can swing for the fences and put down some mega numbers Sunday.

“If I had to guess, I’d imagine that there’s going to be 3.60s out there for sure,” Ashley said. “When the conditions are good here, the track itself is good, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see a bunch of 3.60s out there depending on which pair you are. With it being cooler, I think you’ll see a lot of really close racing and a lot of really fast racing.

“Either way, from a diver’s standpoint, the approach is pretty much the same no matter what the conditions are. We just let Mike and Tommy do their job and I do mine and hopefully it makes for the right combination.”

Ashley will face Terry Totten in round one Sunday, and the winner will receive a bye run into the semifinals.

“I feel like it’s hard to even win a bye run out there, so it’s going to be tough,” Ashley said. “I don’t care who we’re racing. Starting with our good friend Terry over there, you never take anyone lightly. We are looking forward to what will hopefully be a long and exciting race day.”