The top two ranked Funny Cars will meet in the first round of eliminations and the championship could be on the line. Thanksgiving dinner at the Force home could be as well.
 
Sunday’s first round of eliminations at the NHRA Las Vegas Nationals will pit in-laws Robert Hight and Ashley Force Hood against each other.
 
Hight rates the edge the epic battle on Sunday by virtue of qualifying performance and if not for a last ditch 4.197 elapsed time during the final session Force Hood wouldn’t have qualified for the field. Hight qualified third with a 4.065, 308.71.
 
“You never want to wait until the last session to get in but for some reason this weekend, our car has found a reason to not make a run each session,” Force Hood said. “You can see the frustration on my crew chiefs. We knew that if you DNQ, you are pretty much out of the Countdown unless you’re doing really good.”

The top two ranked Funny Cars will meet in the first round of eliminations and the championship could be on the line. Thanksgiving dinner at the Force home could be as well.
 
Sunday’s first round of eliminations at the NHRA Las Vegas Nationals will pit in-laws Robert Hight and Ashley Force Hood against each other.
 
Hight rates the edge the epic battle on Sunday by virtue of qualifying performance and if not for a last ditch 4.197 elapsed time during the final session Force Hood wouldn’t have qualified for the field. Hight qualified third with a 4.065, 308.71.
 
“You never want to wait until the last session to get in but for some reason this weekend, our car has found a reason to not make a run each session,” Force Hood said. “You can see the frustration on my crew chiefs. We knew that if you DNQ, you are pretty much out of the Countdown unless you’re doing really good.”
 
And this is a dramatic turnaround for a team that dominated early in the season while Hight struggled to make the Countdown to 1 on the next to last round of the regular season.
 
“It’s kind of a bummer because we wanted to qualify near the top with both of our teams,” Hight said. “Besides my car, she’s got as good a car as there is out there. We are going to have to make a good run out there tomorrow.”
 
Hight picked up seven bonus qualifying points over the course of qualifying to add to the 13 point lead he held over Force Hood headed into the event. Each round of NHRA competition is worth 20 points.
 
“Those qualifying points that the NHRA came up with, good job … it definitely helped us,” he said. “We’re going to go out and give the fans a good side-by-side race and if those guy [Force Hood’s team] need help tonight, we’ll jump in and help them because without them we wouldn’t have been in the Countdown.”

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