The nitro Funny Car driver lost in the first round at Las Vegas, Houston and Atlanta.

On Friday, Head’s luck changed for the better as he grabbed the provisional No. 1 qualifying spot at the Kansas Nationals with a track-record run of 3.967 seconds at 316.15 mph at Heartland Park Topeka.

“Long as we can keep going down the race track, it’s exciting that’s for sure,” Head said. “Hat’s off to the whole team, they are doing a great job, dad (Jim Head) is tuning the thing and the guys are putting it back together and nothing is falling off of it, and things are good right now. But, that could change (Saturday) in a hurry.”

If Head stays No. 1 it will be his second top qualifying spot of his career. His first came at Charlotte, N.C., in April of 2013.

This was no ordinary run for Head, it was the fifth quickest elapsed time since NHRA began racing Top Fuel and Funny Cars to 1,000 feet in July of 2008.

“The conditions were great, we haven’t seen air like this in a long time,” Head said. “It’s usually pretty muggy and it’s hard to make horsepower. Most importantly, is what everybody with NHRA did with this race track, and the state it was in and how much hard work they put in, starting on Monday (May 18). Everybody from the divisional folks to the national people. I know what it takes to do it. I used to work for NHRA so I take my hat off to everybody here, they did a great job. The pictures I saw (of the track) were pretty rough. It took a lot of massaging and a lot of finesse and filling some pot holes and scraping the rubber and dragging. They really worked their butts off. We had good air, but if we would have good air and not such a good track you would not have seen this. The hat goes off to all these folks, they did a great job.”

Head’s run was no fluke as he had a 4.019-second lap in his first qualifying pass.

“I didn’t hit anything after Q1, so I was pretty excited,” Head said. “I stay out of the lounge. You would have to ask the mad man, dad, he’s the crew chief and he makes all the calls. I absolutely have nothing to do with it (the call for the second run) and I don’t want anything to do with it. I just try and keep it straight. I’m shocked that some other folks didn’t run faster. We have some really, really good cars that didn’t run to their potential. I thought they would have run faster and it is not over with yet. (Saturday) if it doesn’t rain, we will have great conditions. If we ran 3.96, there’s no reason someone can’t go 3.94 or 3.95. It’s out there. The conditions are great.”

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