This was supposed to be a rebuilding year.

It was supposed to be the year that Robert Hight, crew chief Jimmy Prock and the entire John Force Racing-backed team put together a solid foundation in an attempt at contending for a Funny Car world title next year.

As it turns out, this team is a little bit ahead of schedule.

Hight capped what can only be described as a dream season Sunday at the Auto Club NHRA Finals at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona with a stunning title win over rival Ron Capps to earn his second NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Funny Car championship in one of the most trying weekends you will ever see for an eventual champion.

Hight had to overcome narrowly making the field, qualifying next-to-last after a slew of issues during the first two days, a nasty accident in the semifinals against teammate Courtney Force and the unknown of just what Capps – the only man within range of Hight’s championship lead entering the weekend – could do.

But through it all, the team stuck together and Hight was able to cap an amazing weekend with a runner-up finish and a second career Funny Car championship, joining a who’s who list of names in the NHRA history books. He also joined his John Force Racing teammate Brittany Force, who claimed the Top Fuel championship as well in Pomona, giving the JFR team a sweep of the nitro categories.

“The names of multiple champions (in Funny Car) is not very long. John Force, Kenny Bernstein, Don Prudhomme, the Pedregons, Raymond Beadle, Matt Hagan. That is about it. That is an elite group and to have my name there is incredible,” said Hight, whose other Funny Car championship came in 2009. “This is what I live for. This is all I think about. The last couple of years have been pretty tough, coming into the last couple races without a chance at winning, but we turned it around. At the beginning of the year you dream of being in this position.

“We did a lot of work over the winter to put John Force Racing back together and this was supposed to be a building year. But it is crazy how this building year turned into a dream. We never could have imagined we would win two championships. And for Chevrolet, it has been 10 years since they have had a Funny Car champion. We are just getting back to where we need to be and next year is going to be even better. We are going to be a real force next year.”

But it almost never happened.

Hight struggled throughout qualifying both Friday and Saturday, failing to get a clean run in four tries at the historic southern California track. In fact, Hight entered Q4 on Saturday in the 17th position, one spot outside of the 16-car field.

But in his final attempt of the weekend, Hight pedaled his car to a 4.132-second pass at 236.80 mph, good enough for 15th on the ladder.

“It was an eventful weekend. 24 hours ago I wasn’t even qualified for this event and we were leading the points,” Hight said. “We got it together and got in the 15 spot. And if you are in, you have a chance, especially when you have a team like we’ve got. Jimmy Prock, Chris Cunningham, you just believe those guys are a couple adjustments away from turning this thing around. But you are racing a tough competitor in Tim Wilkerson first round and man I didn’t sleep a wink (Saturday) night. You just don’t want to go out there and give it away.”

In the first pairing on Sunday and holding a narrow eight-point lead over Ron Capps, Hight finally put together his first clean run of the weekend with a 3.839 at 332.51 mph as Wilkerson went up in smoke.

Five pairs later, what was shaping up to be an epic battle to the finish between the two winningest Funny Car drivers of 2017, ended in anticlimactic fashion as Del Worsham upset Capps in round one, ending Capps’ hopes at back-to-back championships and handing the title to Hight and John Force Racing.

Hight added wins over Matt Hagan and Courtney Force in the Auto Club Chevrolet Camaro before falling to Tommy Johnson Jr. in the final. But at that point, the championship was already sealed.

“Once we got that (first round) win It felt like it took an hour before Ron Capps ran. Del Worsham had come over to me and told me he was not going to give this away. He said, ‘I don’t think I can outrun him, but I am going to make him beat me,’” Hight said. “And he did that. He went down the track and Capps had problems. That is the coolest way to win a championship, standing down there and being able to watch it on the monitor.

“I just didn’t want to be the guy that gives it away. When I won the championship here in ’09 all I basically had to do was come here and qualify. Here I had to go round-for-round with Ron Capps, and that is a lot of stress. I have never been in that position and you don’t know if you are going to live up to it, how you are going to handle it, are you going to make mistakes? But it all worked out. We all have confidence in one another and that makes me a better driver when I know my crew chiefs and team believe in me as well.”

But even with the title in hand, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the newly crowned champion. In the semifinal round against Courtney Force, Hight’s car lit up in a huge fireball just past the scoreboards and made a hard left turn across the racetrack into the outside retaining wall. His parachutes did not deploy for another couple hundred feet and Hight went into the sandtrap at a high rate of speed, making contact with the netting.

Hight was able to climb from the car uninjured, but the team was forced to a backup car for the final against Johnson. It was also the third different body the team went to during the weekend.

“It reminds me of a weekend we had at the Winter Nationals one year where we went through three bodies and they finally had to go to a show car body and we won the race,” Hight recalled. “I pedaled it Saturday night and it knocked the blower off and damaged the California Highway Patrol car. We had to go back to tried and true Auto Club red, white and blue and that lasted until the semis where, right in the lights, it blew up big and we still don’t know why. That thing made a hard left turn and I could not hold it. I didn’t know where Courtney was, I couldn’t see a thing and put it in the sand. I have never been in the sand, so that was a crazy run for me.

“But when I got back to the pits, the Advance crew members, the Peak crew members rallied to get this thing back together. We ran a body in the final that Brittany ran earlier this year to get her license. We had to strip all of the Monster logos off to get it ready.”

With the remarkable finish to 2017, Hight caps what will go down as one of the most memorable seasons in his illustrious career.

After watching the rival Don Schumacher Racing operation storm out to 12 wins in the first 13 races, Hight notched his very first win of 2017 at the Mopar Mile-High Nationals in Denver in July and followed that up with a second victory two races later in Seattle to take two-of-three in the famed Western Swing.

During that late season stretch, Hight also set the national elapsed time and speed records for the class thanks to the tuning prowess of renowned crew chief Jimmy Prock, recording the very first sub-3.8-second run in Brainerd with a 3.793-second pass, preceded by the fastest run in NHRA history in Sonoma, a blistering 339.87 mph.

Thanks to that late-season consistency, Hight entered the Countdown to the Championship second in points and took over the points lead for the first time all season at the fall Charlotte race after earning his third win of the season. He lost the lead one race later, but closed the gap with a final win in Dallas before taking over the points lead for good at Las Vegas.

“It really started at the Western Swing. While Capps and the DSR guys were winning all of the races early, Jimmy was learning the six-disc clutch and we were coming together as a team,” Hight said. “He said when we go out west, we need to have our act together. And boy did we. We won two of the races, set the speed record, set the ET record, made the first run under 3.8 seconds and we were looking good.

“Going into the Countdown we won two races and I honestly thought it was going to take three races to win this, but two races and a final was good enough. We didn’t need any help. We had this on our own. There was a reason we were coming in here as the points leader – it is because we were the best car.”

Capps, who finished the season in the runner-up spot, had eight wins on the season including an incredible four-in-a-row from April to mid-May. Courtney Force finished the season third, with Jack Beckman and Matt Hagan rounding out the top five. Hagan tied with Hight for the second-most wins during the season with four.

While DSR cars dominated the season to the tune of 25 total wins between the two nitro classes, it was John Force Racing taking home both nitro championships with nine total wins, including four each from Hight and Top Fuel champion Brittany Force.

“We won a million dollars today. That is the stuff you dream about,” said Hight, who also serves as president of John Force Racing in addition to his racing duties. “Coming in here, it could have gone the other way. We were fighting some good teams, but we stayed focused, kept our heads down and did our job. It is pretty cool to double-up with Brittany. We are champions together. When we won together in Dallas, we started to see that it is possible. The whole morale of the team changes when you have two teams in the championship. All I can say is that when you eat, sleep, dream drag racing, the results will come. And they did for us.”