The noise was deafening for Matt Hagan, and it wasn't coming from his 10,000-horsepower Dodge Funny Car.

Just moments before his crew fired the engine, Hagan was strapped in and ready to race against final round opponent Blake Alexander at the NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla. when the voices fired up in his head.

"I was up there going, 'Don't think about it, don't think about it. You need to win, but don't think about it," Hagan recalled. "It's just one of those things when it just happens, it happens, and it becomes natural. You just go up there, and it's like putting an old shoe on, and you just do what you're supposed to do. You know you've got a good car underneath you, and you know you've got the parts and pieces that TSR supplies."

This was no ordinary race for Hagan, who had never won the NHRA Gatornationals. He'd been close but never sealed the deal. 

Same thing this season in his short stint at Tony Stewart Racing, after three races - he had a semi-final finish at the season-opener in Pomona and a runner-up last month in Phoenix.

On a weekend where the front-running cars were vulnerable because of uncharted atmospheric conditions, Hagan found himself getting up on the wheel and racing aggressively. He left the starting line first and never looked back as he ran a 3.910, 330.96 to drive away from Alexander.

Credit team owner Stewart for getting the hulkish Hagan amped up with his friendly needling.

"I really have, so far, enjoyed working with Tony," Hagan said. "It's a different kind of feel. He's not one of those guys that's going to come in and chew you out. He's one of those guys that's like, 'Oh, we're number four. So that means that there's no points for number four? Explain this to me. Number one gets three points. Number two gets two points, and three gives us one?" 

"So, he's kind of one of those guys that will poke at you until you rise to the occasion. But I love that. I love that he wants to be involved, and he's being a part of it, and he could be at the NASCAR deal this weekend, and he's here. He wants to see this come together and do well and be successful, and we're going to do that for him. We're going to make this program very successful."

But, for Hagan, he's never going to miss a good reciprocal needling.

Stewart jokingly told a media member in Gainesville that his role is limited to holding the gas cap.

"Well, he's got to prove himself, so we'll see how good he is," Hagan said with a laugh. Tony, he's a great guy, man. Honestly, I really enjoy working for him. He wants to stay busy. He does it over there with Leah's mixing fuel and different things like that. He was jumping in there today in between rounds and helping change magnetos and different things. I was like, 'Man, you still got to earn my trust. I still have to go 300 miles an hour in this thing, even though you pay the bills."

Maybe his words were in jest. Maybe not. After a weekend where a water-logged Gainesville Raceway took on 15-inches of rain in three days, the Funny Car world spun off of its axis when point leader and No. 1 qualifier Robert Hight smoked the tires on a first-round single. He also watched as his fellow front-runners fall out of competition. 

"I knew we were kind of in trouble when Robert smoked them on the first hit," Hagan explained. "Then we went up there, and I had to pedal and get it to the finish line. These cars like to go fast; they don't like to be slowed down. So as a crew chief, I think Dickie [Venables] did a great job this weekend putting a good car back underneath me and being able to go down the racetrack."

All day long, racers came to the starting line with adjusted altitude below sea level with a track that was massaged into reasonable shape.

"It was definitely a different kind of feel to it today because the air was different, the track was different," Hagan explained. "A lot of these big-hitting cars, they couldn't pull their stuff back enough. I mean, we were down to our shortest rod with no compression in it. That's all we had. You start trying to take blower off of it and different things like that to slow these cars down. Just the air was so good here and stuff like that."

Hagan said last season's championship runner-up left a sour taste in his mouth.

"I know what we're capable of with this Power Broker car," Hagan said. "I know what our team can do. I know the wins that we can pull down and the championship that we can pull down this year. I runner upped last year, won the championship the year before that, and I think two out of the three championships I have won have been after a runner-up. I think it leaves such a nasty, awful taste in your mouth and an empty feeling in your heart when you runner up. So, you go out there, and you do that extra work, and not that they were not working before, but it's a reminder of like, 'Hey, you were close, but you didn't get it done.

"So this year, I'm definitely showing up on the starting line. I'm definitely showing up driving the race car. I want to do my part, and these guys, they do a great job putting a great race car underneath me, and Dickie Venables does an amazing job tuning these cars. You give the guy enough runs and he figures it out. It's magical to watch him work."

But for Hagan, the magic he and Venables share comes at a price. The price is the time and experience of being together. 

"I just know what our team is capable of this year, and I've set goals for myself to win six or eight races, and we've never done that," Hagan said. "But I really feel like we can do that this year, and we're going to have some tough competition. I mean, hats off to Robert Hight. He's an animal, and so is Jimmy Prock, but I'll put Jimmy Prock and Dickie Venables side-by-side any day. 

"Back when we were setting National records, it was throw down round after round, and that, to me, as a driver, was exciting. It was so exciting for me. 

"It's only a matter with Dickie Venables, period. Not to brag or boast, but the guy is just; he's a genius. Dickie can do things with a race car and just go off of his gut instinct, and the things that he does is just, it's phenomenal. When you put up the stats and the numbers, basically, we won more races than anybody in the last ten years combined. So that says a lot for yourself. 

"When you just look at the raw numbers, as a team, what we've done together. That, to me, speaks for ourselves, but it's chemistry. You can't go buy it. There have been plenty of billionaires that have come out here. I mean, not knocking anybody but Johnny Gray and Morgan Lucas, and you can't buy this kind of stuff, man. It's just you click, and you work together, and you have a group of individuals, and they're driven and goal-oriented. That's what we have as a group here." 

For Jim Head Racing, the final round came for a team in its first outing since a 2021 hauler accident that killed loved and respected crewman Dylan Cromwell. 

Alexander beat three past NHRA world champions when he took out JR Todd, Cruz Pedregon, and Ron Capps.