To this point in the season, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan for Leah Pruett and her brand new Dodge Power Brokers team with Tony Stewart Racing.

A string of qualifying woes and early round exits has left the nine-time national event winner hovering around the bottom half of the Top Fuel playoff picture with seemingly no end in sight. But the joy of drag racing is that it can all turn around in one night.

On Friday, Pruett and her TSR team began to turn the corner, overcoming a poor start that left the team last on the charts with one of her best passes of the season to take the provisional top spot at the Dodge Power Brokers NHRA Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway.

“You have to stay positive, but after our first run it was a little bit of a gut punch because we were just so wildly far off,” Pruett said. “To have the faith and trust in a lot of little changes and to roll up for Q2 and, not really trying to go for No. 1, and do that, it is very cool. We just wanted to establish our very first TSR mile-high baseline that we don’t really have. As we were watching the rest of the runs, I thought if we hold on to this No. 1 it will be a cool feeling, especially at our race. There are a lot of great people here and if there is anybody who can broker that power it would be us.”

Just moments after watching her TSR teammate Matt Hagan do the same in Funny Car, Pruett strapped in and blasted to the top of the Top Fuel standings with a stout 3.788-second pass at 326.79 mph in the mountain air to place her dragster on the provisional pole for the second time this season. That run came after a tire-smoking first pass that left her last on the charts.

Thanks to that first round hiccup, Pruett actually had the unique opportunity to join her teammate atop the nitro charts on Friday with just one pass between their chart-topping laps. “To see Matt do that right in front of me in that right lane was really pretty cool. That got me jolted up.”

Greg Carrillo qualified second with a 3.824-second lap at 318.24 mph, while Clay Millican slotted in just behind in third with a 3.826 at 312.93 mph. Josh Hart (3.843) and Steve Torrence (3.850) rounded out the top five.

After such a bumpy start to the season for this new team, with only four qualifying efforts in the top half of the field and no final round visits, Pruett was excited to see the little gains being made by the team already this weekend, especially coming off of their best result of the season just two weeks ago, a semifinal effort in Ohio.

“This team really feeds off of these little wins like this. We don’t over exaggerate them, but we recognize, not only when we don’t do well and it doesn't work, but when we do well. What worked and what to keep working on to keep moving forward,” Pruett said. “My enjoyment right now is just being so incredibly happy for my crew chiefs. We always have our high fives for some and fist bumps for others. I went and gave them a huge hug because I am so happy for them. We took what we did in Norwalk, which is not so relevant to racing here on the mountain, and really just redefined that. Now we have something to work on.

“I am also happy for the fans that every year expect us to do really well. The name Leah on the side of this car has gone to the winner’s circle, but this team hasn’t.”

With two more qualifying runs on Saturday, Pruett will now shift her focus to defending her best start to a weekend since April.

“Our hemi is making a lot more power than we expected it to, to be honest. We compensated in so many other ways to turn that blower so hard and really put so much compression in it to make all of this power,” Pruett said. “When your mechanism is running so flawlessly, that is when extra performance happens and I believe that is what happened right there since we went so far the other way.”

If her time holds on Saturday, it will be her 13th career top qualifier award and first since 2019.