As good as nitro Funny Car driver Robert Hight had been in the first four races of NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship, J.R. Todd wouldn’t go away.

The talented Todd continued to battle and when he won the Toyota Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday he took over the points lead with just one race remaining this season at Pomona, Calif. (Nov. 8-11).

Todd captured the coveted top spot in the points standings by beating Matt Hagan in the final round.

Todd, who pilots the DHL Toyota for Kalitta Motorsports, clocked a 3.921-second elapsed time at 318.39 to defeat Hagan’s 4.087-second lap at 263.62 mph.

Todd came into Sunday trailing reigning world champion Robert Hight in the points chase by a mere six points. He gained the lead by winning in Vegas and having Hight get upset in the first round by Shawn Langdon, his Kalitta Motorsports teammate.

Todd leads Hight by 74 points going into the season-finale in Pomona. Todd has never won an NHRA world championship.

“We still have some unfinished business in Pomona,” Todd said. “Hopefully we can go there and come out of there with two trophies. For me, it comes with being comfortable in the car. I’m at that point now that I just go up there and focus on my reaction times and driving that thing straight down the track. I know those guys (his crew) are going to prepare and awesome car and Todd (Smith) and Jon O (Oberhofer) (his crew chiefs) are doing an awesome job with the tune-up and picking away at it. It was pretty cool, we had Del Worsham there this weekend with the Global team (with driver Langdon), and having him around just brings back all those memories of 2015.

It is awesome having him there helping us out and this was a dream weekend. I would much rather have a 74-point lead (going into Pomona) than an eight-point lead. Points and a half at Pomona are going to make things interesting so we just need to maintain what we have been doing going to the later rounds.”

Worsham won a nitro Funny Car world championship in 2015 while piloting the DHL Funny Car for Kalitta Motorsports.

This is Todd’s fifth win this season and 16th of his career. Todd now has seven career NHRA national event Funny Car wins. Todd’s other nine national event victories came in Top Fuel.

“It started out (Friday), when we didn’t have a good day at all,” Todd said. “We qualified 16th and then right before we ran in Q3 we were bumped out of the show. It was aggressive in Q3 and it ran (3)91 and we ended up qualifying second. That just goes to show how hard those guys work. We had some fuel system issues, they stayed late and changed the entire fuel system and started the car up and rallied back Saturday and made two good runs. (Sunday), they were pretty much flawless. It is so awesome to be able to drive a car like that when it is that consistent and you don’t have to worry about whether you’re going to have to go out there and pedal it or things like that. You just go up there and smack the tree as hard as you can and try to keep that thing stuck in the groove.”

Todd has won this season in Las Vegas twice, once in the spring and now in the fall, Houston, Indianapolis and Reading, Pa.

“We knew going into Indy we had our Hot Rod back, and it showed,” Todd said. “We ran good there in qualifying and on race day and we really haven’t let up since then. It is all about being consistent and we are racing smart. We not overthinking or overdoing things. I feel the way we ran here (in Las Vegas) in the spring gave the guys some good notes to fall back on. You have to give credit to the track. The way they re-did the lanes here, it’s nice and smooth and I knew coming back here in the fall the lanes would probably be even better than they were in the spring time and they were. It is awesome to be able to sweep (Las Vegas). I wasn’t a big fan of the Four-Wide and coming here to win the Toyota Nationals in front of some big dogs who were here this weekend is pretty awesome.”

Since Indy, Todd has a 20-3 elimination round record since Indy.

Todd’s victory parade Sunday consisted of wins over Robert Townsend, teammate Shawn Langdon, Jack Beckman and then Hagan.

“When we saw the ladder (Saturday night), we thought this was would be huge if Shawn and those Global Electronic Technology guys could take him (Hight) out (in the first round) and sure enough they did,” Todd said. “They made a H*ll of a run, that 3.92. Hats off to them for stepping up and they have been struggling during the Countdown. They have a good car and our cars are set up similar and they just have not been getting the breaks they need. It was nice for them to do that and help us out along the way.

We had not been getting much help up until this point with people racing Robert. They have the No. 1 on the side for a reason because they are good. You can ask any crew chief in the Funny Car class ‘Who is the man?’ and they will say Jimmy Prock (Hight’s crew chief). The drivers would say Robert is because they are clutch. It’s not over yet. We still have a lot of work to do in Pomona, but we have to keep after it and not let up. I’m not going to change the way I drive. I don’t think Jon O and Todd are going to change the way they are running the car either. We will be out here (in Las Vegas) testing (Monday) and we will try some things and maybe learn from that and go into Pomona. We need to keep making consistent runs the way we have been and step one is getting qualified there in Pomona, hopefully, in the top half and take it one round at a time.”