You would think Robert Hight would have known to take Mike Neff at his word. But for one brief moment, Hight, driver of the Auto Club of Southern California-sponsored Funny Car, second-guessed his championship tuner.

When Hight stomped the pedal of his Chevrolet Camaro, Neff's words resonated louder than the 10,000-horses screaming and belching fire all the way down the Texas Motorplex concrete quarter-mile. He posted a 3.839-second pass at 332.02 mph to take not only the provisional No. 1 but also the third-quickest Funny Car pass in NHRA history during first-day qualifying at the AAA Texas NHRA Fallnationals. The run also established a new Texas Motorplex track record.  

"Going up for that run, Mike told me that he thought we could run 3.84," Hight explained. "And you know, to me, looking at that, you think 'well, we’ve never run 3.84, so how do you go about doing that? How are you so confident that it’s going to go up there and run 3.84 when we’ve never done that. And to go up there and run just a little quicker, that 3.83 shows he’s got a really good handle on it. And I’m not going to question him."  

Hight, a two-time Dallas winner, won earlier this year in Gainesville, Fla., and entered the event eighth in points, and is all but eliminated in the championship battle with this weekend being the first of three races remaining.
 
"We got five points today on our competitors, and I think that moved me around Tim Wilkerson and into seventh," said Hight, who won the 2009 NHRA championship after starting the season as the tenth seed. "So far, so good. Some of these new parts we put on the car, I think it’s showing a lot of potential. And to say you ran the third quickest run in history, and we’re just getting started, I think the future’s bright for the AAA Camaro."

Hight believes he couldn't have found a better place than the Texas Motorplex to reel off a historic pass, which in all likelihood will ensure his second No. 1 qualifier of the Countdown.

"You know, you go out here, and I remember when I was a kid watching on TV, all the big names setting the records every time they’d come to Texas," Hight said. "Still the same surface that I get to race on today, 31 years later, and look how well it’s holding up. Third quickest run in history. You’re seeing 330 mile per hour Funny Cars. That shows you that concrete obviously is the way to go.

"Billy Meyer was way ahead of his time. You know, this is still a beautiful facility, and he started these kind of facilities in drag racing. This is what it was all based on. This is the benchmark."