Matt Hagan arrived at the Texas Motorplex near Dallas for the Texas NHRA FallNationals this weekend chasing points.

Hagan was third in the points standings – 103 behind leader Robert Hight – with three races left in the season, including Dallas.

Hagan took a small step in trying to make up ground by grabbing the provisional No. 1 spot with a 3.825-second elapsed time at 334.84 mph.

By recording the fastest nitro Funny Car ET Friday night, Hagan collected $15,000 in bonus money put up by Texas Motor Speedway.

“First of all, I want to say thank you to Billy Meyer (Texas Motor Speedway owner),” Hagan said. “Without that, there's no money out here. But it's incredible that we can come out here to this event, this facility. I've been here all week in Dallas and Saturday and just being able to help cross promote with PBR, cross promote with all the stuff that we're doing. And it's one of those things where it feels like you camped out here. It feels good. So, you're like, ‘I'm rested, I'm well. Let's go.’ But for Billy Meyer and his family to put that on and put that money up there like that, it's just exciting to get in the car and get up on the wheel and (get) your adrenaline going and you're chewing on your mouthpiece and you're like, ‘There's money on the line and I know what Dickie's (Venables) capable of,’ and I know what we can do and you go out there and do it.

“What a cool feeling. What a cool feeling to hang on to a car like that. That thing has some fast shaft early and was trying to watch hard. I think the hardest thing to do with these cars as far as driving them goes is not drive them. Because when it's watching and the nose is coming around and you want to grab it and put it back where it needs to be, but you got to let the timing kind of come in and settle the car down.”

If Hagan keeps the No. 1 spot it would be the 49th of his career and sixth of the season.

“There's things we can do to go faster, which was really cool to see and hear, but just hats off to the Meyer family and this Texas Motorplex, the conditions, the facilities give us something to run out there that is just phenomenal and put on a great show for these fans who showed up,” Hagan said. “I think this was a feel good, get happy, feeling good kind of run. You know what I mean? Anytime there's money on the line and your boys can pull it down and it just shows that we can do that. And the conditions are there. We can run 82, 83, 84 when everybody else is out there throwing out 86s. I think that's a confidence thing for obviously my crew chief and assistant crew chief working together. Newt does a lot on the clutch and Dickie works on the motor.

“There's a lot of times where they have to be together and be in sync. A lot of times we have too much motor, it mows through the clutch or not enough motor, and it grabs and sticks a tire. Or it needs more primary early. It had plenty of primary early, so it felt great. But that's the type of runs you want. Loose runs are the fastest runs. It's like a razor blade edge of it falling off either side. If you steer too much this or grab it too early or don't let that tire relax, there's a lot of just opportunities to smoke the tires when they're running that fast. I think that's the hardest thing for me over my career is learning to just let the car go a little ways, even though if it looks like it's pulling itself out the groove. You just can't yard all those things. You got to let the car settle and come back. And then once it did that, it just was right where it needed to be and hauling down Broadway, man. I mean it's just digging the whole time. But yeah, it was definitely a feel-good run for us.”

Hagan knows his team needs a victory on Sunday in a bad way.

“We haven't won in a while. There's no side skirting that at all,” Hagan said. “We've won three races to begin this season and then from the Western swing, we've fallen off. We haven't really fallen off as far as just not been there. We've just been on the backside of a lot of good drag races. We've had some really close races that were 2, 3, 4th out. But (Bob) Tasca can say that too. That's drag racing and that's how competitive NHRA drag racing has become. It feels almost like Pro Stock at 300 mph. So, it's kind of crazy.

“When we get down to this close and nitty gritty, you almost feel like a Pro Stock car. Because my guys are like, ‘You need to drop 10 pounds and work on your reaction time.’ And it's just like, ‘Damn, we got 12,000 horsepower. You sure I got to drop 10 pounds?’ I think it's going to take everything from everybody, me included, on the starting line with what we do. This is the race for us. If we don't do well here, we're pretty much out of it. We can play the number game all you want to. But in my mind, if we don't win this race, it's going to be tough for us. So, we have to step up. We have to be aggressive. We have to run. And if we go down smoking the tires, I'd much rather do that than laying up hitting a base hit. So that's just the mentality I have. I want to go down swinging and just leave nothing on the table. Dickie Venables is going to go out there and do what he does and I'm going to do what I do and hopefully the car can be on at the same time the driver is on. You know what I mean? When that happens, usually pretty good stuff happens.”