It is not lost on Leah Pritchett just how far she has come in such a short amount of time.

From missing the field altogether in her first handful of tries, to a couple of spots on the bottom half of the ladder the past two years, Pritchett’s rise from young upstart jumping from team to team to battling for the Top Fuel championship is well documented.

And it is for that reason, Pritchett’s run Friday night during the opening round of qualifying at the 63rd annual Chevrolet Performance NHRA U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Raceway was all the more special as the driver of the Papa John’s dragster set a new track record and rocketed to the provisional top spot with a 3.667-second pass at 329.50 mph.

“The track record at Indianapolis, that is big,” Pritchett said. “This has more merit than many other tracks because it has been run for so many years and it is the U.S. Nationals. We looked at the computer briefly before coming back here and I don’t know exactly what that track could have held, but based on our strategy of going into a session like this, we probably could have had a little more. This is the time to get in. Tomorrow is the day to get after it.

“From just a couple of years ago missing qualifying by one thousandth of a second, to doing this in the very first session tonight, it is very humbling. I just couldn’t be more proud of this team and blown away by everything this team has done.”

Pritchett’s chart-topping pass surpassed Doug Kalitta, who qualified second during the first of five qualifying sessions at Indy with a 3.682 at 329.42 mph. Antron Brown qualified third with a 3.689 at 329.75 mph, while Clay Millican (3.689) and Steve Torrence (3.712) round out the top five.

While it wasn’t that long ago that runs in the 3.60s were considered ground-breaking for the Top Fuel class, it is becoming commonplace for the competitors as they continue to lower the bar in the ultra-competitive category.

“There was a time when we would talk about exactly what we were going to run. The last words from Todd (Okuhara) would be, ‘this is going to be a low 70 or a high 60’ and it was so cool to talk about 60s,” Pritchett said. “Now, when we say we are shooting for mid-60s, that is technically our new normal, but that is because we are doing abnormal things all of the time now. We continue to ramp up our game and improve our parts and pieces. Hopefully we only continue to improve on what is considered the norm.”

Even more impressive for Pritchett and the entire team is the immediate success after choosing not to test in the days leading up to the biggest race of the year.

“There is always that little bit of a question, should we have tested? Have we fallen behind?,” Pritchett said. “But having the confidence and momentum from Brainerd and having the run we had tonight just shows that we are still in the game. We can pick up right where we left off.”

But even with a solid pass placing the Don Schumacher Racing-backed team back on top, the battle continues as the trio of Pritchett, Antron Brown and Steve Torrence continue to trade the championship lead in this, the last race before the start of the Countdown to the Championship.

“Whether we have a big bullseye or a very small bullseye on our backs, we don’t look at it,” Pritchett said. “We look at what is ahead. We don’t worry about what anyone else is doing, we just focus on what we have to do.”