The dream ride continued on Saturday for rookie sensation Tanner Gray as the 19-year-old driver of the Gray Motorsports Valvoline Chevrolet Camaro took the top spot at the 30th annual NHRA Northwest Nationals to earn his second career No. 1.

Gray bested teammate and fellow surprise-season nominee Drew Skillman on Saturday with a chart-topping 6.565-second pass at 210.24 mph, his second No. 1 of the season and first since early June.

“I feel really good right now. The guys have given me a really good race car and they have been doing an awesome job,” Gray said. “Even the Skillman team, they have had a damn bracket car. I am really excited coming into tomorrow. Although it is kind of a bad weekend to get the No. 1 spot, everyone was going for that No. 2 spot so they could get a bye to the semis.

“But after two runs I feel like I hit the tree pretty well and have been consistent. Especially coming off a win last week in Sonoma, confidence is up. We will go into tomorrow and see what happens.”

Skillman qualified second in the Ray Skillman Chevrolet Camaro with a 6.568 at 209.75 mph, while points leader Bo Butner qualified third with a 6.570 at 210.28 mph.

Coming off of his third win of the season one week ago in California, Gray will receive a bye in round one and will face an extremely tough matchup between the winner of Greg Anderson and Allen Johnson in round two.

“It all starts back at the engine shop and they are making good power right now and the crew chiefs have learned to run the cars better and better each race,” Gray said. “They are learning new things every run - we just learned something new off of that run right there. I think it has been a lot of buildup to this. A lot of ups and downs. We feel like we are finally consistent and have fast cars and can win everywhere we go.”

But more than anything, Gray says the collaboration between his team and that of his teammate, has led to a lot of positive gains throughout the season leading to a class-tying six wins for the Gray Motorsports team.

“Our teams collaborate about as much as you can,” Gray said. “It is a lot of communication. We share run info and help each other with runs. It is a pretty cool deal we have here. And if one of the cars is out, we all work together on the car that is still in. It makes it a lot easier, a lot smoother. We are all working together really well right now and hopefully we can keep it up.”