Across all sports on nearly every continent, there comes a moment in every championship battle that defines what it truly means to be a champion.

Brittany Force hopes her moment came Friday night.

Chasing her second career Top Fuel championship, Force entered this weekend’s Auto Club NHRA Finals seven points clear of her closest rival Justin Ashley. On Friday, Force extended that lead to 13 points, but perhaps more importantly, set the stage for a clear advantage on race day with the provisional pole and a new NHRA speed record in the class.

Force and crew chief David Grubnic called their shot under the lights Friday evening at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, powering their Monster Energy machine to a stout 3.641-second pass at 338.94 mph, resetting her own speed record set earlier this year in St. Louis.

“That is a great start for our team to really be able to grab those points wherever we can,” Force said. “It is pretty awesome to run that 338 and grab the mile-per-hour record at my home track. When I got out on the other end, they said 338 and I said, ‘Did we beat our St. Louis 338? What were the numbers on it?’ It’s pretty cool to hold that track record here at my home race at the track I grew up running. I love it here.”

While Force earned six crucial bonus points on Friday thanks to her chart-topping pass and another top-four run earlier in the day, her closest rival Ashley failed to find any points on opening day. His 3.706 at 329.42 mph was only good enough for seventh after two of four qualifying sessions.

“We’re looking at it one round at a time. That run, we planned to push the car. I feel like the points will probably be set tomorrow night, but it is just one round at a time,” Force said. “We want to go low each session and try to get those points wherever we can get them and then we’ll reset on race day and look at who we’re running and how the whole thing is going to fall into place.

“It ultimately will come down to race day and we’re only just so many points apart. Anything could change in qualifying, so it’s good that we are getting those points while we can.”

Defending class champion Steve Torrence, who is mathematically still in contention for the title, sits second on the charts with a 3.656 at 333.33 mph. Leah Pruett is third with a 3.669 at 329.67 mph, while Mike Salinas (3.679) and Doug Kalitta (3.699) round out the top five.

If her time holds, it will be Force’s 10th No. 1 qualifier of the season and the 42nd of her career.

Earlier in the day, Force laid down a 3.742, good enough for third after one round of qualifying. While it wasn’t where she wanted to be, she wasn’t concerned knowing her crew chief’s propensity for pushing the envelope during the aptly named “hero sessions” later in the day.

“On that run, David Grubnic came over and said his standard thing, ‘We’re going to push and hit our target.’ That’s exactly what we were aiming for,” Force said.

She also noted that the team tends to struggle when playing it safe, adding, “It seems like in the past, when we’ve pulled back and tried to lay up a little and play it safe, that is when we seem to struggle. Our car runs the best when we push it. We know what it’s capable of running. You just can’t let that fear or doubt come in and pull you back.”

While the championship is still very much up for grabs, Force’s primary goal during qualifying is to keep the lead and not have to play from behind on Sunday. She held the points lead for much of the season, but only just gained it back with a win two weeks ago in Las Vegas.

“We just want to be ahead, however it ends up,” Force said. “Our team won this in 2017 and we were behind, so I mean it could go either way. But our main goal coming into the Countdown, where we lost it, was we just want to stay out ahead until we get to Pomona and then we regroup there. So it is important to stay out ahead. We need every little point we can get.”

Adding to the drama, Pomona is one of only two races that showcases a unique points-and-a-half format allowing teams to earn more points than usual over the course of the weekend.

So with Force in the midst of one of the closest championship battles in some time in the class, how does she feel about the unique points format this weekend?

“I’ll tell you Sunday,” Force said.