Funny Car owner-racer Terry Haddock is competing in his 323rd NHRA event at the Four-Wide Las Vegas Nationals, and he recently has started to reap some rewards for his perseverance.

After 174 DNQs and 136 first-round exits, the Temple, Texas, engine-repair shop owner has seen a turnaround. He has only 14 elimination round-wins, but three of those have come in the past 14 days as he made it into the top 10 in the standings.

“We’re just going to try to keep doing the same thing,” Haddock said at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “We've worked hard to change our program during the off-season, and we're trying to get consistent. And with consistency, we'll get a little faster.”

Haddock was in the field of 16 until late Saturday afternoon, when Chad Green bumped him out. Still, the New Jersey native knows his program is heading in the right direction. And he isn’t planning to stop pursuing his dream now.

“This is so much fun,” he said earlier in qualifying. “I’ve been chasing this for 25 years. And people tell you to give up when things are hard or stop because it’s too much or you’re making bad decisions.

“It’s even more rewarding because after last week [following his breakout performance at Pomona, Calif.], it’s overwhelming how many people are watching when you think people don’t care what you’re doing. So thank you to everybody who’s messaging us, watching us, putting up with us, and giving us money to keep this running.”

Two major factors in Haddock’s increased achievements are having Johnny West return as tuner and selling his Top Fuel dragster. The latter is the reason for the former – West said the reason he came back to work with Haddock is that the dragster is out of the shop.

“It’s too hard to run two cars out of one trailer. It needs to be two complete operations,” West said.

That was no problem for Haddock: “I'm happy the dragster is gone," he said.

“I was never a big fan of the dragster. I don't come from the right area to where we can afford to do this. So I always had the dragster, and in my head, I thought that the dragster would generate money to help this,” he said with a nod to the Funny Car. “And it turned out the world's changed so much in the last couple of years that it became a very flawed plan. And not only did it take more money, but it also distracted me. So then we weren't giving anything 100-percent effort.

“We were trying, but the results weren't showing. So we decided at the end of last year that we were going to sell the dragster and concentrate on one car, try to have a better program, be better prepared."

West’s influence has been a huge boost to Haddock’s program.

“Johnny worked for me a couple of years ago, and he taught me so much. Johnny is a details guy, and the details win races,” Haddock said. “But my life, because I want to do this so bad, I'm always doing everything I can to keep doing it, that sometimes I miss the details and the details of what turned it around.

“Last year, this Funny Car would be, on an average, every fifth run, it would go 4.02, 4.05, 4.0. We knew how to run 4.0, but we couldn't do it again because we were missing things; because the attention to detail wasn't there,” he said. “So the whole idea is to learn how to go four-flat every time you pull the wires, and then it'll accidentally run 3.90. But if you look over history, if you go 4.00 every run, chances of winning races are better than going 3.90 flat once a summer. So it's learning to think differently and be more prepared.

“In The Bible, it says that wisdom is a friend of experience. So we're going to go with that,” Haddock said. “It’s just the truth. When you have a kid and you see the world, all of a sudden being a dad becomes more important, because I need to make sure he turns out right. So sometimes when you look to the world for guidance, it's flawed. The guidance in there [The Bible] is always right, and it's always the same.”