Winning an NHRA nitro Funny Car world championship is a difficult task, to say the least.

Veteran driver Tommy Johnson Jr. is trying to make a late push to capture the elusive and highly coveted crown.

Johnson Jr. took a small step towards accomplishing that goal during Friday's first day of qualifying, grabbing the provisional No. 1 spot in his Don Schumacher Racing Make-A-Wish Dodge Charger at the AAA Texas NHRA FallNationals.

Johnson claimed the provisional top spot with a 3.958-second run at 323.66-mph during the second session.

Tim Wilkerson had an identical E.T., but on speed Johnson Jr. claimed the provisional No. 1 spot and an additional three points.

“The first few cars were a little quicker than I thought they were going to be because it cooled down, but not a lot,” Johnson Jr. said. “We stood on it. We ran well first round (4.062 seconds) and went down the race track and it gave us the option to do that (in the second session). John (Collins. Johnson Jr.’s crew chief) got after it pretty good and it is always fun to watch him when cars are starting to run better out there, and he comes back and opens the box and twists some knobs and another car runs good and he comes back and twists them some more. I knew it was either going to smoke the tires or run pretty good.”

Johnson Jr. has 15 No. 1 qualifying spots in his career, but none this season.

“After looking at it, it still wasn’t a perfect run by any means, but it was good enough to get No. 1,” he said. “It’s coming around at the right time of the year.”

Johnson Jr. entered the Dallas event sixth in points on the strength of two runner-up finishes at Phoenix and Brainerd.

“We started off the year with a six-disc (clutch) and then at Richmond we switched back to the five-disc,” Johnson Jr. said. “We just had so much more data with the five-disc and with the track prep now, I don’t think we had enough information with a six-disc (clutch) to be able to make the adjustments needed so we went back to the five (disc) and experimented with that and played with it some more. You can see that the car I’ve had the last few years where we ran well at the end of the season and had a competitive car, you can see that coming back to us now. John (Collins) is comfortable with the five-disc. He knows what changes to make and he makes it work. We have had to decrease the power level a little bit and it kind of fell back into our hands that the five-disc works good again.”

Johnson acknowledged Dallas and the next event, the Carolina Nationals (Oct. 12-14), are crucial to his world championship dreams.

“If you’re going to have a shot, you have to have a shot by the time you leave Charlotte,” Johnson said. “If we can keep ourselves in it right now this race and the next race, which I think we will do because our car has been performing and headed the right direction the last six to eight races. It almost like you have to peak at the right time and I thought you needed to be peaking at the first race of the Countdown, but I’m not so sure you need to be peaking more toward the middle of it because you have to finish it.”