The most impressive part of Robert Hight's Friday evening No. 1 qualifying run at the NHRA FallNationals is that he even made it to the finish line under power. Equally impressive is the fact he made it off of the starting line following a series of snafus.

But, he did, and in doing so, kept his dimming championship hopes alive by securing six bonus points in leading both sessions. However, the second session 3.878, 331.94 mile per hour run also netted him a check of $15,000 courtesy of the Texas Motorplex Stampede of Speed bonus. 

"We had a cluster up there and I really feel bad for Bob Tasca," Hight explained. "I don't think it messed him; he ran a .91, at least it didn't screw his run up completely. But we backed up, and one of the guys noticed we had a fuel leak. In fact, Jimmy, I think, even might have burned himself in reaching over the header to try to fix it, and he ended up fixing it himself. They got him a wrench. But it was a long time and honestly, I thought NHRA might shut us off because we held those guys up a long time. We sat there; both of us used a lot of fuel, heating the clutch. Just something you don't like to do. 

"Then when I was rolling up, Jimmy threw his radio, and I lit both lights which I wanted to get in there quick. I did not want to waste any more time and hold up Tasca, but I lit both lights. Not even sure I was shallow, staged perfectly and then he came in and the tree came down; I wasn't ready. Hit the gas and drove down there. But on the radio they told me it ran .87, but I didn't know what Tasca ran. They didn't tell me that we were low. So it was a confusing run to say the least, but it's pretty cool."

So how did Hight remain calm amid the mayhem playing out in front of his eyes? 

"You just got to," Hight said. "You just got to kind of play it through your head and do one step at a time and not screw up. My light was horrible, and that's not a good feeling when you leave that far behind another car. If he were to come over in your lane, that's pretty dangerous; you'd t-bone him. So it wasn't the perfect situation. But at least we got down there. It didn't blow up because it used too much fuel. I thank NHRA and Tasca for giving us the time to fix it and get the run in.

Hight, who entered the event ranked eighth in the points, believes going to No. 1 went a long way to heal the ills of what has been a troublesome 2021 Countdown to the Championship.

"It's kind of what the doctor ordered for this AAA of Texas team," Hight explained. "We've struggled here lately and to come out and get six points today, low of each session. It shows we still got it, and I think we've put too much pressure on ourselves and we're just gonna have some fun from here on out. I think we're a long way back, but if you were to win three or four of these races, we're right back in this thing. That's our goal, have some fun and see what see what the outcome is.

"This is huge because we haven't had that for a long time. We've ran good, spurts of good but we also had a lot of bad races. No consistency this year, definitely not like the last season I raced in '19, where we won six races and were low ET and we were on our game. But this shows that we still got it; we can do it."