Matt Hagan played high school football in southwestern Virginia, and he knows the game is nothing like drag racing. In football, a player can neutralize the opponent and cause a momentum shift. He can tackle the running back on a crucial play, sack the quarterback, or intercept a pass. But in this Funny Car championship chase, points leader Hagan, for instance, can’t just go and tackle Robert Hight, who’s in third place in the standings and starting to cut his margin by winning the event, taking the No. 1 qualifying spot and earning bonus points.

“Oh, I can,” Hagan said with the audacious laugh of a linebacker.

Of course, he won’t. Nor will he flatten No. 2 Bob Tasca III.

Hagan said he has learned through the years that “you don't really have control over other people or who you're racing or who they race or anything like that.”

Hagan said that concept is “challenging,” but he said, “What has helped me deal with pressure or turn pressure into something that's exciting for me is really just focusing on what I have control over. When you think about the big picture, you're like, ‘Oh, this guy's got to beat this guy,’ and  ‘Cylinder head guy's got to put the head on right,’ and ‘There's a bottom-end guy to torque the rods right,’ you start thinking about it, it's overwhelming. You don't really control that. You have no control over it, so why worry about that? So for me, it's like focus on what I can control and do the best job I can with that and believe in the guys that I'm with.

“You have to trust in your people. You have to trust that they're going to do a great job, that they're going to rise to the occasion. And then when that moment comes for you, you have to rise to the occasion,” Hagan said. “I think that's something I really pride myself on is when we get down to the semifinals and finals, I really step up a lot of times in the race car, and I make sure that we have a great light and I'm doing my job in the race car. And I think my guys see that and they know that and they believe in that. But I know that they're going to drag the car up there and nothing's going to fall off of it and they're going to do their job and Dickie Venables is going to run the track as hard as he possibly can run from the data that he gets from Kurt [track specialist Johnson] out there.

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“We just try to do a good job racing. You just can't sweat it, man. The cards will fall where they're going to fall,” he said.

“I've been on both sides of it to where I had to show up and win two rounds and Force had to win the race. That was my second year driving a race car, and it ripped my heart out. You roll in there thinking you're gonna be a champion second year, and it didn't happen. Super humbling. Super humbling,” Hagan said. “But I grew a lot as a person. I grew a lot as a man. I grew a lot as a racer.

“Things are different now. I've been in those positions a lot now, and we finished third last year, second year before that, won the championship before that and so on and so on. I've had three titles with two different tuners. Autoweek named me driver of the decade, and it was not off of popularity. It's just off of round wins and race wins and championship wins and that comes back down to your crew and your guys and me doing a good job. If we could pull this down and win another championship, we're on the right track to doing it again.”