After a three-race struggle with a first-round defeats in Denver, Sonoma, Calif., and Seattle, nitro Funny Car NHRA world champion Matt Hagan turned the corner in Topeka, Kan., advancing to the semifinals.

Hagan then flexed his muscles again, clocking a 3.843-second elapsed time at 331.36 mph in Q4 to take the No. 1 qualifying spot at the Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Minn.

“It is really impressive to do that out there with the sun shining like that,” Hagan said. “That’s a big testament to this racetrack and how good they did getting it ready to go. Gosh, think what we could have run if the clouds were out.”

Hagan arrived in Brainerd second in the point standings on the strength of three wins and three runner-up finishes in 14 races.

This is Hagan’s fifth No. 1 qualifying spot this season and the 48th of his career.

“At the end of the day, we were very fortunate to have this Mopar 85th Anniversary car in the No. 1 position,” Hagan said. “That gives us a great spot with a bye run. It all matters. It all counts. Every round is big especially coming into this Countdown (the final six races of the season). I know we probably can’t catch Robert (Hight) but we need to keep this second place where we are at to move into the Countdown to make sure we start the Countdown in a great position to really battle for a championship out here.

“I’m come into the Countdown before and not won a race the entire season and then win a couple in the Countdown and win a championship. Anything can happen and you just have to have it together at the end and that’s what we are trying to do.”

Hagan acknowledged heading into Brainerd he was going to count heavily on the wisdom of his world championship crew chief Dickie Venables.

“I knew rolling into this weekend it was going to be Dickie Venables' type of weather and his confidence was going to be there,” Hagan said. “We seem to struggle a little bit with the hot weather tune-up and I’m about ready to try and talk him into taking it over to Indy and flogging it when it is 120 degrees and making runs to get a good baseline for the hot weather stuff, but I think that is behind us now. Dickie just really shines when it is good like this and we have a great racetrack and this Mopar car is just running strong and I'm really proud that we could put it on the pole today.

“I was thinking 'damn, we are going to have Force in the morning'. Not that you don’t want to run the guy because I love running him. But that should be a semifinal, final round, you know what I mean. Then cars started shuffling around and running good numbers and I was like you could see it in Dickie’s eyes to hang tight. We were trying to run that the last couple of runs, but it needed more clutch and a little bit more power. We went out there and went two 89s in a row, which is really consistent. A lot pf guys would be happy that, but Dickie wasn’t. I’m glad we were able to go out there and run 84 and lay it down. That’s the first time in a while I haven’t seen Robert beside me. I was pretty tickled with that.”

Hagan had no doubt his car was on a blistering pass.

“When cars are really fast like that, they are loose,” Hagan said. “It made some really big moves early and I just kind of like where I was trying to put it back where it needed to be in the front of nose. It is easy when they are running that hard to come loose. I was just like don’t touch it, don’t touch it and put it back where it needs to be. I got her straightened up and the clutch came in and it really started to run out the back door and I was like we have a race car now. Then, it popped there in the finish line.

“Sometimes they will do that if they are little lean and you lift off the pedal like that it just kind of pops the manifold and it was kind of a little boomer for what it was. It tagged my elbow and it was one of the those things where I felt like I was coming off the third rope with an elbow drop. I’m just going to ice it up tonight and come out in the morning and put my mouthpiece in and hang on.”