One shoe made all the difference in Cinderella’s life. For Brittany Force, it was a hat, at least for a season. 

Force traded in a gaggle of yellow hats for qualifying No. 1 six times last weekend for a blue winner one, and life has been glorious ever since. 

Adding a seventh No. 1 qualifier on Saturday at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd, Minn., Force is anything but a Cinderella story. 

On Saturday afternoon, she saved her best for last, thundering past the Brainerd International Raceway finish line in 3.675 seconds at over 334.98.

A repeat of last weekend’s triumphant performance would suit Force. 

“That’s our goal this weekend,” Force said. “Coming out of that win in Topeka with my dad was pretty incredible for all of John Force Racing to be able to double up like that. But for our team as well, we’ve been chasing this first win for, I mean, all season long. We had the number one hats, but we just can’t seem to figure it out on race day. But we got it done last weekend and our plan is to repeat that again in Brainerd.”

Make no mistake, Ms.Force’s confidence is at an all-time high. 

“There’s just a different energy in our pits after winning and celebrating in the winner’s circle with my whole team after all our hard work,” Force said. “Being able to celebrate that, there’s no better feeling than winning. That’s why we’re out here. You want to win. They make the bad days suck a little less. It’s just finding that again on race day. We want to do it again. We want to repeat, we want to win. We’re chasing Steve Torrence right now, and he's number one in points. That’s our goal till the end of the season.”

Ironically, Torrence laid down a jaw-dropper in Q-2 with a 3.684, 329.91, a run that put him in a different area code during the second day of qualifying. 

During Q3, however, Force reeled him in, giving credence about peaking at the right time in the season. 

“I think we’re in a good place,” Force admitted. “Coming into the beginning of the season, our goal was to be top three going into the Countdown. We’ve been hanging in there pretty well. We’re two right now. Really it’s; we got to step it up. We got to turn it around. Once that Countdown begins, we go to Indy next, and then it’s game on. It’s every point matters, every run matters, every crew guy, everything we do matters at that point, and you can’t make mistakes.”

As Force knows, mistakes are the difference between leaving with a yellow hat or a blue one; or in her case - both.