Making the NHRA Countdown to the Championship can be a stressful roller-coaster ride.

It’s a ride Robert Hight knows all too well.

A year ago, Hight, who pilots the Auto Club Ford Mustang for John Force Racing, just barely qualified for the Countdown in the No. 10 spot by capturing a controversial win over John Force in the semifinals at the U.S. Nationals.

Hight’s victory also set off a firestorm between Tony Pedregon and Force because Hight’s win against his father-in-law and boss, knocked Cruz, Tony’s brother and defending NHRA Top Fuel Funny Car world champion, out of the Countdown. Force beat Cruz Pedregon in the second round.

Making the NHRA Countdown to the Championship can be a stressful roller-coaster ride.

It’s a ride Robert Hight knows all too well.

A year ago, Hight, who pilots the Auto Club Ford Mustang for John Force Racing, just barely qualified for the Countdown in the No. 10 spot by capturing a controversial win over John Force in the semifinals at the U.S. Nationals.

Hight’s victory also set off a firestorm between Tony Pedregon and Force because Hight’s win against his father-in-law and boss, knocked Cruz, Tony’s brother and defending NHRA Top Fuel Funny Car world champion, out of the Countdown. Force beat Cruz Pedregon in the second round.

“I really didn’t know if we were going to make it to the Countdown,” Hight said. “I believed in my team and I’ve tried to forget all about how I got in. I was just happy we got in and I don’t think anybody would argue that we had the best car the last six races last year as we won three of them.”

Those victories catapulted Hight to winning his first world championship by 66 points over his teammate Ashley Force Hood, John’s daughter.

“It was a dream come true to win the title last season,” Hight said.

John Force made no apologies for how Hight made into the 2009 Countdown to 1 playoffs.

“That is what is good about life, controversy,” Force said.

This year Hight has no stress, at least in terms of making it into the Countdown field. He has already clinched a spot in the Countdown with one race to go – the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals Aug. 12-15 in Brainerd, Minn. – before the Countdown to 1 begins.

Hight is in second place in the point standings, 28 points behind John Force, thanks to beating Force in the finals of the Mile-High Nationals last Sunday Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, Colo.

“John and I are only a round and a half apart and we have a couple of weeks off,” Hight said. “John, I’m sure he will rib me and jab me because he’s been saying all winter long after I won the championship that he was coming after me. We will just see if we can get the job done at Brainerd.”

Following Hight’s win at Bandimere, Force was visibly upset at the top end of the track, but he felt his actions were a result of his competitive nature.

“I know I’ve been asked how I felt because I looked really terrible down there,” Force said. “The bottom line is he is my teammate, I helped teach him. He’s my son-in-law, my grand baby’s dad, my daughter’s husband, so I aint mad at him. I just do not like losing. I’m 61, and I’m signed for five years and I have a car that can run for the championship. Every point counts and I may not get that chance in the next five years that I have a car this good. It could just go bad, like it did for the last three years. If Robert goes around me (at Brainerd), I don’t care about that either. I do, but at least it is a Ford and we have Castrol and Auto Club on all the cars.”

After last year’s struggle to just get into the Countdown to 1, this season has been gratifying for Hight.

“This year has been very vindicating for us, no doubt about it, and it is the best season I have ever had, I have never won four races in a season,” Hight said. “I said during the winter, the next championship I win, I didn’t want us to just barely get in the Countdown. We started out the season struggling, but then we got rolling and won three races and have been to four final rounds. We wanted to be a hitter in the game all year long and that’s what we have been able to do so far.”

The reigning world champ was unbeatable in May, winning consecutive races at St. Louis, Commerce, Ga., and Topeka, Kan. Hight just missed running his victory streak to four as he lost to Matt Hagan in the finals at Chicago the first weekend of June.

Following his string of four outstanding races, Hight’s team made a proactive decision for the near future.

“It’s all a matter of having the right combination, and when you change clutch discs some things are just out of your control,” said Hight, who was the clutch specialist on John Force’s Funny Car for seven championship seasons from 1995-2001. “We hit on the right clutch disc combination and we won three races and went to four finals. Then, we started to realize if we kept using that same clutch disc combination we would not be able to have it through the Countdown. So, at Englishtown, we went to a new clutch disc combination and we have not figured it out yet. This new clutch disc combination may turn out to be better than the one we had, but if it doesn’t at least we know we have the other clutch disc combination set aside that we had a lot of success with and we can use it.”

Hight also realizes he still has plenty at stake at Brainerd.

“We want to do our best to finish in first place before the Countdown to 1 begins,” Hight said. “If we do that, we will get 30 more points over the second place driver and those are points we could use, so we’re going to be plenty motivated.”

Following Brainerd, Hight says he and his team led by crew chief Jimmy Prock is planning on doing some testing.

“We will probably do some testing at Indy,” Hight said. “That’s a good track and it’s where we’re based. We want to shake the car down, and make sure we have everything figured out before the Countdown to 1 starts (Sept. 1-6 at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis). We want to have things in order with the car, so we can just go out there and have fun in the Countdown. I know I would love to win a second championship in a row. That would put me in a select group of drivers who have won at least two titles in the last 20 years.”

Hight’s right. Since 1990, John Force and Cruz Pedregon and Tony Pedregon are the only Funny Car drivers to capture multiple world crowns. Force has won 14 championships in that time span, his last coming in 2006. Cruz won in 1992 and 2008, and Tony took top honors in 2003 and 2007.

“John (Force) told me before I won the championship last year that winning the second one will start to consume you,” Hight said. “Once we won last year, we didn’t have much time to celebrate. We were already focused on winning it again (in 2010). That has been our goal since the start of the season and it’s something I feel we are very capable of doing.”