Brittany Force, skittish earlier this year about getting back in her Monster Energy Dragster following a nasty crash at the season-opener, had to psych herself up to get back into the 10,000-horsepower, nitromethane-burning car.

Now the reigning Top Fuel champion and winner of the most recent Mello Yello Drag Racing Series race hardly wants to get out of it.

When she did so Friday evening at Concord, N.C.’s zMAX Dragway, Force owned the class’ provisional No. 1 qualifying position for the NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals and the track elapsed-time record of 3.689 seconds (at 318.39 mph) on the 1,000-foot course.

She shared the spotlight with younger sister Courtney Force, who was quickest and fastest in the Funny Car category.

Force replaced early leader Steve Torrence, last year’s winner of this event who is pursuing his third consecutive victory in four-wide races. He’s tied with fellow Texas resident Tony Schumacher for the points lead.

But the night belonged to Force, who said she thought with distinctly different weather conditions expected tomorrow, her performance “will be the run of the night – for the whole weekend, really. This is our best shot at going No. 1. Tomorrow’s more about getting ready for Sunday.”

She’ll be aiming for a second straight victory after earning her eighth career Wally trophy at Houston.

Her record-setting pass, she said, “felt good, especially compared to the run we made earlier. It went down there, but we got in trouble with it earlier. This run, I just wanted a clean, safe pass down there. I wasn’t expecting to go No. 1.”

It put the icing on yet another John Force Racing comeback this season. The latest misfortune was the boss’ failure to qualify at the Spring Nationals at Houston last weekend, something Brittany Force made up for by winning her final-round match-up against Terry McMillen.

Sister Courtney called the season “a roller-coaster start” for the team but said the resilience “shows the level of commitment and the perseverance of all of us in pushing forward.”  She said seeing their father miss the cut for the first time since 2008 “definitely puts a little bit of extra fire in my sister and me. We don’t like to see Dad down and being frustrated. That pushes us to show him that we all do have a great team. We’re one team.”  

Tony Schumacher also posted an E.T. in the 3.6-second range, at 3.692 (at 331.61 mph) to take the No. 2 spot overnight. His Don Schumacher Racing / U.S. Army teammate Antron Brown is third at the moment with a 3.719-second effort. Torrence (3.731, 330.72) is fourth.