Bob Tasca III called his second straight No. 1 NHRA Funny Car start a “glimmer of dominance.” 

In molten conditions at Topeka’s Heartland Motorsports Park, Tasca continued his hot streak Saturday. And it has melted any frustration, any angst about over-trying and under-performing, any pressure from his promise to deliver championships if Ford reinvested in drag racing.

In eliminations at start at 10:30 Sunday morning, BG Products Ford Mustang owner-driver Tasca will race No. 14 Jack Wyatt. It matters not to Tasca that the pairing is a break from the customary bracketing because the field is two entries short of being full. He’ll have to earn an automatic second-round free pass into the semifinals, but he isn’t concerned. 

What’s significant for Tasca is that his team is maturing. It’s handling wild pitches as though they were routine fastballs – accepting what challenges the racetracks and weather throw at them and figuring out how to master them. 

“I’m feeling very confident going into first round tomorrow,” he said. “We just got to focus on winning that first round. I would never use the word ‘cocky,’ because we're not. Trust me, I've been humbled out here as much as anyone. But we're very confident. We have everything that we need to win.” 

Tasca showed he has the horsepower to win the Menards Nationals presented by PetArmor, with his  3.930-second elapsed time on the 1,000-foot Kansas course and his 323.81-mph speed. His E.T. edged No. 2 starter John Force by a thousandth of a second, and his speed outclassed everyone else’s except that of JR Todd, who qualified eighth in his DHL Toyota Supra but registered a 323.50 mph. 

But that elevated performance, Tasca said, can be a tricky asset. 

“I guess that's where the pressure mounts, when you're not winning and you're not performing. There's a lot of pressure and expectations,” he said. “And now, once you turn this corner, we have a long way to go. This is a set-up that we really started with in Sonoma racing. We've tested it, but really racing it, it started in Sonoma. So we have a lot of work to do and some fine-tuning. But the bottom line is now the expectation is to continue to win. 

“And I think that's our mindset,” he said. “We're peaking at a very good time going into the end of the regular season. And just, I think the best is yet to come for this team. I really believe it.” 

Tasca said he wouldn’t say he has been “stressed” but admitted that because of his driven personality, it has been difficult to recognize what he’s capable of but not find the right combination to prove it. 

“From a team owner and driver perspective, it's way less stressful to be on this side of the curve than the other side of the curve. I am such a competitive person, along with Mike [crew chief Neff] and the whole team, not to have a car that runs like this is stressful. We are digging in, we're thinking, we're working, we're testing, we're doing everything we can to get ourselves to where we are. I wouldn't call it stress, but it shifts from trying to compete and figure out how to get there to now continuing to perform. And that's ultimately what our mindset is now. A year ago at this time, we were slipping away. We had a great run. We were slipping away. We didn't really have the breadth of the tune-up from hot track to cold track to everything in between.” 

And he doesn’t want to experience that again. 

“I think you can see us mature as a team, with Mike and Jon [co-crew chief Schaffer], really digging in this past off-season. And we sacrificed a lot of races. I said it a couple times. I said, ‘We looked a little silly early in the season, but we don't look silly anymore.’ And I give all the credit to the guys and Mike and Jon for really getting this race car where it is. I'll take a little credit for my diet. I went on a diet, officially, in Denver, and I think those seven pounds that I lost got me the No. 1 qualifier hat.” 

Tasca embarked on a no-carb diet. He said, “There are no carbs, no dairy, and no meat. And just 19 days, seven pounds. Vegetables and that's about it. A lot of water. But no, I just challenged myself. I'm a competitive person, even to my own self. And I don't know. Did it make a difference between a 390, with a 1 and a 2? In this sport, it's getting that crazy. Maybe it did.” 

That’s hard to confirm. But it means that Tasca is leaving no stone unturned in his mission to bring Ford a first series crown since John Force earned one a dozen years ago, in 2010. 

And he knows a couple of outstanding races isn’t enough to guarantee it, not with the level of competition the class is experiencing this season. 

“When you think of Funny Car, 3.93 with [a zero], with a 1, and with a 2, you're talking a Funny Car class being separated by three cars by 10,000ths. And it's just a tribute to the whole sport on how competitive racing has now become,” Tasca said. “And to have glimmers of dominance like we've had in these last couple of races really gives us a lot of confidence.” 

He said it’s “no question” that the oppressive heat ”is an equalizer. But I'll tell you, on certain tracks, it's more pronounced when it gets hot like this. This Heartland Park Topeka . . . raced here many years. This is an incredible race track. And you saw it today. I think we were "racing on the surface of the sun," someone just said, right? [It was] 143 degrees. But we got a great racetrack. The air's tough to make power. 

“So it almost helps each other, right? Trying to run [3.]80s and the car's giving you [3.]93s because it's hard to make horsepower in this air. But it is challenging. And you have to pull it back. In the second round today, first round this morning, we want to try to find that edge. Mike is like, ‘I don't know. Be ready to catch it.’ And we pressed a little bit too hard, and we made a little adjustment from that. And boom, we found where that edge is,” Tasca said. 

“I think Denver is more challenging than where we are right now, just because of the static altitude,” he said. “But we left Seattle [which presented scorching temperatures all weekend], Mike and I were like, ‘All right. We dodged the last hottest track of the year. Now we can start to focus on our go-fast stuff.’ And I looked at the forecast coming in [to Topeka], and Mike looked at it and started laughing. He goes, ‘Well, I guess, so much for what we said in Seattle.’ But I think you're going to see the conditions start to cool down going into Brainerd and Indy. [It] can go either way. And now you're going to have the cars that can go out there and run [3.]80s. And that's what we didn't have last year. And we have that this year.” 

By the end of the season, Tasca surely is hoping that glimmer of dominance kindles a persistent blaze.