To those who may have thought Blake Alexander’s provisional No. 1 spot Friday night at the Lucas Oil Nationals was an aberration – it wasn’t.     

Alexander drove his Pronto Auto Service Center/Jim Head entry to the title  Sunday at Brainerd (Minn.) International Raceway.

Alexander clocked a 3.927-second elapsed time at 324.67 mph to defeat Matt Hagan, who double-stepped it and registered a redlight start. 

“Jim Head is a great man, and I’m very fortunate to work for him and very fortunate to learn from him,” Alexander said. “I wanted to pay everything off for everyone who works on this race car. It is hard to do, and there are a lot of really good competitors out here. There wasn’t a drag race that I wanted to get to more in my 15 years of doing this more than this one. So, I was happy to be here and happy to light it up on Friday night and happy to light it up on Sunday for everyone.”

Sunday’s victory rewarded Alexander with his fourth career NHRA Wally and second in nitro Funny Car.,

Alexander won first his national-event Wally in Norwalk, Ohio, in Top Fuel in 2018, then duplicated the feat in nitro Funny Car at the facility in 2023. He was also a Top Fuel winner in 2018 in Sonoma, Calif.  

Sunday’s victory march saw Alexander dispose of Dave Richards, John Force pinch-hitter Jack Beckman, and Chad Green before he knocked off Hagan. All of Alexander’s 1,000-foot passes were clocked in the low 3.90s.  

“We did a lot of things for sure,” owner/crew chief Jim Head said in a starting-line interview with Fox after the win light came on in his driver’s lane. “I kind of calmed myself down a little bit. I like to run for performance, and I don’t particularly care if I win a round, we want to run good. We tried to run a 92 and it did, and Dickie (Venables, Hagan’s crew chief) is really an amazing competitor, so you don’t take him lightly for sure. I got my head out of my ass, like I said earlier.”

For Alexander to hoist a Wally in Brainerd marked a major reversal of fortunes, considering his team had multiple explosions in Sonoma, Calif., and lost in the first round. Sonoma was the most-recent race on the circuit entering Brainerd.

“I've never really been through anything like that before, and I've been doing this for, like, 14 years, I think – and that was, like, the hardest couple of weeks in between races, trying to reset everything,” Alexander said. “And I honestly was pretty banged up after the car blew up, but I just wanted to keep driving it and do my best. And then when I got home and your adrenaline goes away, you realize that you've been through some stuff.

“But I wanted to come back here and fix everything that I messed up in Sonoma. Jim, I know, wanted to come back here and fix everything that happened in Sonoma. And the only way you can do that is by coming back out here and showing it to everyone.”  

Alexander made the woes of Sonoma seem like ancient history with his Brainerd outing. Alexander qualified third with his solid 3.874, 331.61 shot Friday night, and he just kept mowing down the competition on race day.  

“It honestly feels a lot different than the last race. Like I said, (Sonoma) was the hardest race I've ever had in my career,” Alexander said. “And then to come here and have one of the best races I've ever had in my career, I don't want to sound arrogant, but I know, when I'm on, that I'm one of the top guys out here. And I know when I'm not on, just like anyone else, that I can be a problem for my race team. So, I'm trying to keep it tight; four straight runs every single time. And saying that is really easy to do and doing it is really hard. As you saw, a lot of people today were cracking under the pressure.” 

This was the fourth final-round match between Alexander and Hagan, who won NHRA championships in 2011, ’14, ’20 and ’23. After Sunday, their head-to-head final-round scorecard is 2-2.

“I knew he (Hagan) was going to be juiced, and we knew that we were outrunning them, and they were going to try something,” Alexander said. “So, by all accounts, we were pretty confident going into the final. Even though we're parked way down at the end and we're a single–car team, there's a lot of confidence pouring out of Jim Head and Blake Alexander. So, we were ready to go.”  

This was Head’s second career win in Brainerd. He first won at BIR in 1985 when he was an owner-driver in his nitro Funny Car.

Alexander is one of only 18 drivers to win a Top Fuel and Funny Car Wally. Head is also on that exclusive list.   

Alexander now has a 14-10 record in eliminations this year, which ties his career best in Funny Car. A year ago, he compiled a 14-17 mark while finishing 12th in the standings.    

“I really consistently think that the less I think about everything, the better things will happen for me as a driver,” Alexander said. “So, I'm trying to keep everything – the outside noise – down. And each run … (I envisioned) that I was making a test run and no one was here, and it was just me in the car.”   

Alexander climbed from 10th to seventh in the standings with only the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis (Aug. 28-Sept. 2) remaining in the regular season. 

“Honestly, this should work pretty similarly. We'll run good here and then go run good there,” Alexander said about Indy. “That's honestly two of the nicest racetracks for a fuel Funny Car back-to-back on tour. So as a driver, it's helpful to go to those two tracks and know that you're not hitting bumps and having all this undulation in the track in a Funny Car, which makes you have to steer a bunch and avoid hitting things.

“And so here (Brainerd), you can just let it rip. That plays right into Jim's playbook, and I'm really proud of them. They worked really, really hard on the combination, and seeing them pull the strings on it in between runs with the engine, the clutch management, the fuel and everything. If people understood how complex it was to do this, they just wouldn't even believe it.”

Alexander and the Head team haven’t tackled the full schedule to date, running 11 of 13 events, yet now he’s given notice he may be in contention for a world championship. 

“Well, I don't really know if you know me, but I had to work for everything to get to this point,” he said. “And a lot of the crew guys out here, and a lot of the people in the NHRA family know that, because they saw me struggle for years and years and years. So that being said, when I did do good when I was younger, it was in hot, muggy weather. So, when this happens, I feel super comfortable sweating in my firesuit because I know it's an opportunity for a guy like me. And, yeah, I knew what was going to happen today when I talked to my wife this morning, that it was going to get hot outside, and I was going to have a chance.

“We're making legit horsepower now, and when it turns into a horsepower game out here, we can play that game with them now. I'm pretty proud of that. We got out-qualified by a couple of guys this weekend. They also have triple the staff, triple the budget, and they're sponsored by a big-four car manufacturer so, in all honesty, they probably should.

“Winning (Brainerd) means something because Jim Head comes up here and he has family up here, basically. They're his friends, and he fishes with them. And we were eating alligator (Sunday) in between rounds. I don't really know why but ... and it's just a nice place to come to. When you can feel that the people who own the track and the fans care, it makes a big difference when you're in a little vacuum of the world right here. That's perfect for us.”