Mike Neff had no idea he'd be driving a National Hot Rod Association  Funny Car again until exactly one month before this season started.

Now, halfway through the Full Throttle Drag Racing Series season, he has no idea what he'll be doing next year.

Right now it doesn't matter, though. The Castrol Ford Mustang driver has a championship to pursue.

Neff is leading the Funny Car standings and has won three times, twice in the past three events. In 10 races, he has advanced to six final rounds, including four consecutive and five of the past six. With a 25-7 elimination-round record, he has a 24-point advantage over second-place Jack Beckman in the standings and only a 26-point edge on teammate and four-time winner Robert Hight.

Mike Neff had no idea he'd be driving a National Hot Rod Association  Funny Car again until exactly one month before this season started.

Now, halfway through the Full Throttle Drag Racing Series season, he has no idea what he'll be doing next year.

Right now it doesn't matter, though. The Castrol Ford Mustang driver has a championship to pursue.

Neff is leading the Funny Car standings and has won three times, twice in the past three events. In 10 races, he has advanced to six final rounds, including four consecutive and five of the past six. With a 25-7 elimination-round record, he has a 24-point advantage over second-place Jack Beckman in the standings and only a 26-point edge on teammate and four-time winner Robert Hight.

But even though team owner John Force is focused on winning for the first time this year, he has to be planning ahead for 2012.

The team dropped back to three cars because of the economic pinch, sending Neff back to a crew chief role after his two full years in the cockpit. Then, with Force Hood's pregnancy, Neff returned to driving in addition to tuning. Force's youngest daughter, Courtney, is preparing to debut in the Funny Car class next season, and no one is certain if Force Hood will return then. The sanctioning body allows each organization a total of four cars in one class.

So would Neff happily go back to being solely a crew chief? And would he like that?

He isn't about to speculate as he prepares for the O'Reilly Route 66 Nationals this weekend at Joliet, Ill. But he did say he prefers tuning if he had to make a choice.

"I have no idea what we're going to be doing or I'm going to be doing next year. I don't think Force or anybody else does, either, at this time," Neff said. "We're just trying to see what Ashley wants to do after she has her baby and how Courtney has progressed. It's all going to depend on that."

Suppose Courtney is ready to begin her first full season and older sister Ashley returns.

"John probably would break one more Funny Car out if that scenario happened. It's just going to depend on if Courtney is ready by next year. She's doing a good job, but who knows? You need to make quite a few runs in one of those things before you're ready to start racing," Neff said.

Is it possible that Courtney Force would be held back, pending more testing?

"I'm sure it's possible. I know they're trying to get her ready. She probably will be ready. She looked like she's progressing pretty good," Neff said. "If that scenario happened, if Courtney was ready to go for next year and Ashley wanted to come back, then yeah, I definitely would not be driving. John would have to bring another car out if he wanted them both, because obviously we only got three.

"There again," he said, "I got a feeling we won't know how that's going to all shake out until right before next season, like kind of the way it happened this year."

Said Neff, "Honestly, I'll be fine with it either way. I enjoyed last year with John driving and me tuning. We had a great year. It was fun being a part of that. He's the most exciting driver, and I think he's the best driver. So if I went back to tuning after Ashley came back, then we probably would go back to like it was last year: John would drive my car and Ashley would get back in her car with Guido -- that's the way it would go down.

"I just feel a lot better that way. I enjoy the tuning. That's what I intend to do for the next 10 years or whatever," Neff said. "I don't want to sit out of it. I sat out of it for a couple of years while I was just driving, and that's hard to do. You've got to stay in the loop, because you're racing all these other guys and they're keeping up and they're tuning and getting more experience. When you're sitting on the sidelines, that hurts you. It takes you awhile to get back in the groove and get things going again. I want to stay involved in the tuning part. So if I could do one or the other, it would definitely be tuning."

He said he truly would have no regrets. Besides, he has learned the hard way that a double-duty effort will wear him out if he doesn't remember to eat and stay hydrated.

Neff barely had the strength to hold his trophy following his first victory, in March at Gainesville, Fla. The next month at Houston, he reached the finals again but fouled out, saying later, "My brain was just not all there. I have to get myself in better shape. I have to be able to get myself through the day."

These days he nibbles on snack bars or small bites of food and drinks plenty of water.

"I just forget. I'm doing other stuff and don't want to have to (stop)," he said. "You're just flat out and you only have so much time, especially these races where you have only 65 minutes in between rounds. I don't like eating when I'm doing all that. I don't like that feeling after you eat.

"If I just go back to tuning, it'll be a lot less stuff I have to worry about. I'm good either way. If I can only do one or the other, I would much rather tune than just drive. The only way I'm interested in driving is if I can tune it."

"The mental stress wears you down more than the physical stress," Neff said.

Quipped grandpa-to-be Force, "He thinks he's on overload now? Wait till Ashley has a baby. Then he'll be babysitting, too!"

Neff, who has a 12-year-old son, Chase, and an eight-year-old daughter, Chloe, replied, "Yeah, right. I've already done that in my time. Babysitting is not on my list of things to do."

That's understandably true. He has enough on his plate.