Nobody in the Top Fuel Countdown field has been eliminated yet, and any one of the 12 championship-eligible drivers can mix up the standings this weekend at the Texas FallNationals at Texas Motorplex, near Dallas.  

This race marks the start of the second half of the six-event Countdown, and it began Friday with the second through seventh seeds within 74 points of each other and No. 7 Doug Kalitta just 88 points behind leader Justin Ashley. 

Ashley days ago shook off his first-round loss to No. 4-ranked Mike Salinas at St. Louis, and Salinas has stopped thinking about his second-round defeat against No. 6 Josh Hart. Likewise, Antron Brown put his Round 1 stumble against Clay Millican behind him. And the whole pack – Steve Torrence, Brittany Force, Salinas, Brown, Hart, and Kalitta – have been ready for days to take advantage of four qualifying sessions and maybe one another’s mistakes to position themselves for a title run in the final two races, at Las Vegas and Pomona, Calif. 

Ashley said he didn’t put too much stock in that St. Louis surprise for him and hi Phillips Connect/Vita C Dragster team: “Yeah, I mean, I don't think it puts any more pressure on us. We certainly left ourselves vulnerable. We left the door open – that much is for sure. And you know that in the Countdown, the margin for error is very small. So, yes, when you have a race like that, where you have a round one exit, you really can't afford to have that happen again. But at the same time, there's no added pressure or anything like that. We just put that race behind us already. We learned from it and moved on. So for us, it's all about Dallas. It’s not about Vegas. It's not about Pomona. Right now, it's about Dallas and going out there and putting our best foot forward. And come the end of Dallas, we want to make sure that we collected enough bonus points, that we stacked enough round wins to feel good about where we're at heading into the last two races.” 

St. Louis winner Steve Torrence has been champing at the bit to bring his momentum to his home track. “Being able to capitalize on some of the things that transpired Sunday in St. Louis was huge for us, and we needed that. It was a good weekend, and we're carrying that momentum going into Dallas. We've had a lot of success at Dallas and been able to run well there. I think the track conditions are going to trend to be a little hotter than what we saw in St. Louis, which will be a little more difficult to navigate for the crew chiefs. It really [has] not been our greatest season up to this point, and it feels like things may have turned around a little bit. The car's performance is definitely there, and as a driver, that just gives you a lot of confidence going into it. But we got a lot of friends, a lot of family, a lot of customers that we work with that are going to be in this weekend, so we're really looking forward to it.

“We learned a lot about ourselves and about each other in 2017 when we went through what we went through [crashing in eliminations and destroying what he had said was his best car] here and struggling through the last final races of the Countdown. It's easy to triumph in victory, but when you're struggling, it really makes you get down and dirty and figure out what you got to do and who you are and where your team stands, and each one of these Capco boys have really just stood up tall and held ground and done the best we could to make it to this point,” the Kilgore, Texas, native said. 

“And I said in St. Louis, I've never been a big fan of the Countdown, and I'm still not a fan of the Countdown. And at this point, we should all be racing for second, because Brittany has been so dominant this year. But that's the world we live in,” Torrence said. “So we have a shot at it, and we're going to see if we can get it to stick and what we can do.” 

Force, who at the most recent race took her third straight second-round loss to find herself third in the standings, has shown resilience and said, “We’ll be looking for some big improvements.” She said, “Given where we are at in this Countdown, this Flav-R-Pac / Monster Energy team is only 30 points behind. We have struggled, but the top is still not out of our reach. Those 30 points are not much. We could make that up in one good,  solid weekend. [We] found our problem – had a cylinder out right from the step – but we have answers on that. [At Dallas] had success there before, won the Stampede of Speed Friday Night Live qualifying event last year, and I’ve won the race in the past.” 

In inviting the Ennis/Waxahachie/Dallas community to the Thursday fanfest at Waxahachie’s Railyard Park, Mike Salinas and family said, “We’re on a mission to spread love through motorsports.” They only meant away from competition. If Salinas leaves Dallas with a truckload of points – and he’s just five points behind Force and 35 from Ashley – he can guess which ones who won’t be loving him back.  

Brown, already a three-time Top Fuel champion, staked his place in the title talk by winning at three of the past six events (Topeka, Indianapolis, Charlotte). He’s seeking his 50th No. 1 start and his 56th Top Fuel victory (72nd overall) in the Matco-sponsored “Tools For The Cause” Dragster. He’d like to score a cowboy-hat trick with a third race at Texas Motorplex after winning here in 2012 and 2016, both championship years for him. He said midweek that he’s “ready to get the big Stampede of Speed started. We’ve got three races left, and we find ourselves right there in the thick of things. This weekend will be a crucial race for us. The temperature is going to be hot, and we’re looking forward to that challenge. It’s not going to be dropping low E.T.s and running in the 3.60s. Normally, our Countdown races are in prime, throwdown conditions, so to have this hot one in the Countdown is kind of a curveball. The track is usually really good at the Motorplex, so even if it’s hot, we should still be able to make some good runs. Our focus is to qualify well, put our Matco ‘Tools for the Cause’ car in the top five on the ladder, and set ourselves up for race day. We’re very eager, very hungry, and ready to go into this race. We’re poised, but it’s time to be in attack mode. We live for these big ‘make or break’ moments, and I believe these are the moments where our team will shine.” 

All that confident conversation hasn’t scared off St. Louis runner-up Hart. The No. 6-slotted R+L Carriers Dragster owner-driver isn’t concerned about the 64-point gap between himself and leader Ashley – or his 21-point deficit against No. 5 Brown. “My R+L Carriers team has been awesome, and I think we will keep surprising people,” Hart said. My R+L Carriers team has been awesome and I think we will keep surprising people.” 

Closing in on the end of his first fulltime campaign and only his second overall, Hart said, “This season has been a learning experience that has taken off as fast as my 11,000 horsepower Top Fuel dragster. We are a single-car team, and this is my first year taking on this kind of challenge. I have a great team with Ron Douglas as crew chief and Chris Armstrong bought into the team, so we have great funding to compete with these multi-car established organizations. This is where I want to be: racing the best competition every weekend. We started in the Countdown No. 5, and we have held our own. But now is when we need to make a move. These last three races are critical, and I just want to have a shot on the last day of the season to win the championship. Anything’s possible, and if we are racing at Pomona with points and a half, I have a lot of confidence in this team.” 

Doug Kalitta, who calls himself an eternal optimist, said his Mac Tools team is “seeing the performance numbers that will win us races.” If he should get hot and earn a third Dallas victory (adding to his triumphs in 2002 and 2013), his 88-point discrepancy would dwindle quickly. 

Millican (-126), Shawn Langdon (-143), Reading winner Austin Prock (-144), Leah Pruett (-179), and leading Top Fuel Dallas winner Tony Schumacher (-187) are plenty capable of gaining some ground this weekend.