Last year’s Dallas Glenn, meet this year’s, Dallas Glenn. He’s a more street-smart, seat-of-the-pants-savvy driver than the rookie who won last year’s event with a “trip-zip” reaction time in the final round. 

“We’re in a different car now,” Glenn said. “It’s a whole different feel for the year. I feel a lot more confident in the car. I can just get in and do my thing. I feel a lot better about that. This car is, I won’t say it’s frustrating me a little bit, but it’s definitely been a little bit tougher to kind of find my sweet spot and a little bit tougher to stay there, which I don’t know if that’s me or the car. 

“Being that it’s the second year and I’m coming into all this stuff with a little bit more experience. It almost feels like I’m a little bit more relaxed all the time I’m up there. So I kind of have to hype myself up a little bit more when it’s time to really get on it. So that’s something I’m kind of just getting used to, but I’m still having an absolute blast out here.” 

Just being able to express frustration in a car shows just how much Glenn has advanced. 

“There’s always frustrations in it; no matter what happened last year, I’m just along for the ride,” said Glenn, who was the 2021 NHRA Rookie of the Year. “This year now, I feel like it’s a little bit more refined. I can pay attention to some of the better, smaller details. I kind of learned all those lessons throughout the year last year, and now I’m trying to implement them and still learn, so still making adjustments every run, just like I was. I’ll find that good spot, and I’ll stumble on something eventually.”

As Glenn sees it, he’s stumbling onto more experience with each pass. 

“Sometimes I’ll go up there and try something, and then something will confuse me and I’ll be like, ‘well, that doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll go look at the run, and I’ll go back and try something else on the next one. I’m like, ‘oh, okay, that makes more sense of why that happened and why this happened to that race.”

“That’s definitely a good learning thing. But the beginning of the year, just all that bad luck stuff that happened that I keep telling people, I’m saving all my luck for the end.”

Make no mistake, the perfect reaction time in last season’s Topeka final was no lucky matter. Well, maybe a little bit. 

“It wasn’t the first run I was double 0 that weekend,” Glenn explained. “But I do contribute to a lot of it being luck because I gave myself the triple 0 because I staged a little bit sloppy. I think I got in an extra three-quarters to an inch or so and knocked a few thousandths out of my light that way. I think I just got lucky I didn’t go that extra eighth of an inch and go red. But some of it is when you’re on it, and you’re constantly hitting it and sometimes you just get lucky, and you don’t go that extra eighth of an inch.”

Looking back on his incredible rookie season, Glenn will admit he wasn’t 100 percent in step with his car. 

“I would say I feel like maybe in the 70%, and I feel like now I’m closer to the 90%. By the end of the year, I was probably 80% last year, and I feel like I’ve learned a few new things this year that I didn’t know last year. So who knows, maybe next year I could be over. I don’t know. You may have to adjust all those percentages. It’s a nonstop battle of learning in Pro Stock.”