Doug Kalitta was the buzz of both qualifying sessions Friday at Bandimere Speedway at the Mopar Mile-High Nationals – for completely different reasons.

The Mac Tools Dragster driver went from the outhouse to the penthouse, from not being able to start his car to not allowing anyone to stop it from dominating.

Kalitta smashed Steve Torrence’s year-old track record with a 3.767-second pass at 323.97 mph on the 1,000-foot Morrison, Colo., course in the later session Friday. And he knocked Torrence, the five-time winner and points leader from the provisional top spot.

If Kalitta can keep his grip on the No. 1 starting position, it will mark the second time this year and 49th overall that he has led the Top Fuel field into race-day eliminations. Two more qualifying sessions are scheduled for Saturday, with eliminations set for Sunday.

Kalitta’s run was a stark contrast to his fortunes in the first session, when his dragster failed to fire for his side-by-side with Brittany Force, and the crew had no choice but to push it from the starting line.

“We had a starter malfunction,” Kalitta said. “By the time we got that [taken care of], we just ran out of time. That was a bummer. It happens. I told my son, Mitch, who’s here with me this weekend, ‘I’m glad it wasn’t first round [of eliminations].’ We came up with a little different way of getting fuel into the supercharger. I think it was a lot happier, too. So hopefully we got that behind us.”

He laughed at his misfortune, saying, “You’ve got to stage the car to make it for Sunday.”

Kalitta did that, all right, in his next chance.

“I was real confident going up [to the starting line]. The conditions were real good. I was a little concerned the way the all the Funny Cars were smoking the tires or whatever was going on there [just ahead of the Top Fuel runs, which he helped kicked off].” He said his dragster “was just going down the track, and I was hoping it would stay hooked up and stay running. And it did.

“Hats off to my guys,” he said of the Jim Oberhofer/Troy Fasching-led crew. “We bounced back from not even making the first round and ripped off a good one there. Jim was pretty happy, and Troy was pretty happy. They deserve that one after all the thrashing they did.”

Doug Kalitta’s boss and uncle, Connie Kalitta, has won at the facility, as did his cousin Scott Kalitta and one-time teammate Dave Grubnic.

“We’ve got to keep that Kalitta legacy going. We’ll be working on it,” he promised.

Torrence, who’s going for a third consecutive victory and sixth in nine starts, took the early lead Friday with a 3.797-second elapsed time at a 322.04-mph speed. With success of his own at Bandimere Speedway and seven final-round appearances in the past nine races, Torrence said, “It’s hard to put a price tag on the momentum we have right now.”

Kalitta sent him the bill Friday at closing time.