Larry Dixon has been wondering about one thing for awhile. The two-time NHRA Top Fuel champion, and driver of the Al-Anabi Top Fuel dragster, wonders what it will be like to enter a season as a relaxed challenger.

Dixon entered the 2009 season, after a whirlwind off-season of leaving one team to join another, with a team scrambling to gather parts, pieces and personnel. For all their efforts, the team failed to make the cut in the first race of the season, an event marred by rain with limited qualifying.

The good thing for Dixon and the Al-Anabi team is that a season isn’t judged by how you start. It’s how you finish that matters most.

Larry Dixon has been wondering about one thing for awhile. The two-time NHRA Top Fuel champion, and driver of the Al-Anabi Top Fuel dragster, wonders what it will be like to enter a season as a relaxed challenger.

Dixon entered the 2009 season, after a whirlwind off-season of leaving one team to join another, with a team scrambling to gather parts, pieces and personnel. For all their efforts, the team failed to make the cut in the first race of the season, an event marred by rain with limited qualifying.

The good thing for Dixon and the Al-Anabi team is that a season isn’t judged by how you start. It’s how you finish that matters most.

Five national event wins, nine pole positions and a championship runner-up after a less-than-spectacular start is enough cause for Dixon to get amped up for the new season.

“I’ve been looking forward to going to Pomona since the Wednesday after the last Pomona race,” said Dixon, who lost out on the 2009 championship by two points. “I think our whole Al-Anabi team has.  Fortunately for us, I think the winter let us work on refining the package we finished the year with; we want to be a little better than we were when we finished last season. Last winter was all about getting our Al-Anabi team put together just to get out on the track to start the season. We hoped what we brought was good enough, but it wasn’t; so we spent the winter trying to make our team better, and now we get to find out if we are any better than we were last season.

“Instead of scrambling to get a team put together, we had the opportunity to spend this past off season refining, and that’s very positive. It’s cool to have a great team and have the opportunity to improve what we had.”

Dixon is looking forward to seeing how the Al-Anabi team matches up with the competition, and if a pre-season test session at Palm Beach International Raceway in Jupiter, Fla., is any indication, he’ll be in the thick of another championship battle.

Dixon’s unofficial 3.763 elapsed time serves as a personal best and is better than the current NHRA national record. His quickest run represented the second time during the test session that his Jason McCulloch-tuned dragster ran quicker than the national record.

This weekend’s event is special for Dixon, who is not only a driver but a longtime fan of the sport. The significance of this event is not lost  on him in the midst of a feverish push to score a season-opening win.

“The 50th Winternationals is a special event, and NHRA has a lot of things planned for this race,” said Dixon. “From what I understand, they have cars from all 50 years of this event, and that’s exciting.  My dad won that race in 1970, and it’s one of what I consider a major.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have won it in the past, and I’m proud of those three wins (1998, 2002, ’03).  The 50th Winternationals is a big deal, and we’re going to do everything we can to put our Al-Anabi Racing dragster in the winner’s circle.”