Joe Comella won last season’s Dodge Hemi Challenge, and although he should have been overjoyed, the perfectionist in him just didn’t let him go into overload elation.

This year, ditto.

From Thursday’s Q-2 session, Comella established himself as the driver to beat with an 8.421 elapsed at 158.80 miles per hour. And in Friday’s final round during the Dodge HEMI Challenge, he saved his best for last with an 8.407, 159.19 to beat a red-lighting Eldon Baum Jr.

“We wanted to come in this year and run the table and keep it smooth and relaxed and A-to-B every run,” Comella said. “Didn’t feel like last year’s [win] was a very representative year, even though it was really fast and we won.”

Comella has actually shown strong performance over the last three seasons. He was runner-up in the 2020 version of the event.

Winning this event always measures up as his greatest drag racing achievement, regardless of how much better he feels he could have performed.