With the way the 2016 NHRA Funny Car season has played out,  you could hardly blame defending series champion Del Worsham for expecting the unexpected.

Worsham, the base-hitting series champion who made consistency cool with his 2015 season, landed a shot in the upper deck during Q-2 qualifying at the NHRA Summit Racing Equipment Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio. The DHL-sponsored driver piloted his Toyota Camry to a new Summit Raceway Park track record of 3.875 seconds at 328.70 miles per hour, also a Norwalk track record.

With temperatures expected to rise into the mid-to-high 80-degree range for Saturday, logic would likely mandate the run will hold as the No. 1 qualifier through Saturday’s sessions.

"Looking at the weather report, I would say that run should probably hold up for No. 1 qualifier," Worsham said. "I would think it would hold up in the heat, but the way this season has gone, who the heck knows?

"It's been such a crazy year, and the cars run so fast, and they do things that I can't believe nowadays. Some of the runs I've seen under some of these temperatures and conditions have been amazing, so to say for certainty it would hold I probably couldn't, but I feel pretty comfortable with it."

Slipping into second was point leader Ron Capps (3.882), followed by Robert Hight (3.886), Courtney Force (3.889) and Jack Beckman (3.891).

John Force, who has more runs at the Norwalk facility than any other Funny Car driver in competition, missed the Friday cut with a 4.114 best.

Worsham and his Jon Oberhofer/Nicky Boninfante crew have been working towards developing a solid warm weather, race day combination.

“We’ve been working for the last few events on our race day tune-up, but at the last few events made a few mistakes on Sunday,” Worsham said. “We had to set up tonight’s good run with a good clean run in Q-1. The car ran what we wanted it to run all day.”

Worsham says realistically Saturday’s qualifying should yield times in the mid-to-high 3.90s.

“That’s probably a safe bet, but you never know when you are facing a 130-degree track,” Worsham explained. “You look back at our runs here last year and the Q-1 was a 4.08, 306 and this year it was a 3.95, 326. And when you analyze it all, it wasn’t far off of what he did last year, with a few changes here and there. A year of evolution has done a lot for the progression of this class.”

And, for Worsham, this advancement is more than enough for him to expect the unexpected.

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