There was no surprises in Pro Stock qualifying Friday in the O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Spring Nationals at Houston Raceway Park.

 Mike Edwards, the reigning world champ of the class, once again set the pace, capturing the top qualifying spot with a 6.539-second run.

“Conditions here (at Houston) are not quite as good as they were at Charlotte a couple of weeks ago, but the track got really, really good tonight,” said Edwards, who also had the top pass of the second qualifying session at 6.550 seconds. “We left a little bit out there on the track because it definitely got better for us. Tomorrow is another day and it looks like it might be a little more humid, but we will see. I’m just real happy with my guys. They did a great job and we made two nice runs tonight. We will come out tomorrow and hopefully we can race the track and improve.”

So far this season, things have not gone according to script for Top Fuel driver Antron Brown.

Brown, who finished third in the final points chase last year, just 49 points behind champion Tony Schumacher, has had a rocky start to 2010.

Brown, trying to reverse his fortunes, took a step toward doing just that by grabbing the top qualifying spot Friday at the O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Spring Nationals with a 3.803-second elapsed time at Houston Raceway Park.

“We went out there earlier in the day in the right lane and we were just a little bit early fast,” Brown said. “We went to the left lane after Brian (Corradi) and Mark (Oswald) saw (John) Force run that 4.02, that was pretty sporty. We were in that lane and we were like two pairs behind him (Force), so they wanted to step it up. When we took off, the car lifted the front wheels higher than they’ve ever lifted them up and carried them far out there. I knew I was on a ride right there. The car held on really good and we got back to look at the computer and that thing was on the edge all the way to the 330-mark. That’s about as much as it is going to hold for a dragster, unless someone runs out the back door better than we did.”

Austin Coil smiled when longtime driver John Force thundered to the second quickest elapsed time in 1,000-foot drag racing history during qualifying for the NHRA Springnationals in Houston, Tex.

Then he barked as only an old dog with a renewed bite could

“There was a couple of old dogs on the porch and didn’t want to get off, me and Bernie, and then when the young pup came in barking and running around,” Coil proclaimed. “When he started grabbing our food, it made us old guys get up. He made us realize we still had some fire left in us.”

Donnie Bender is officially a part of Kenny Bernstein racing this weekend.

Bender, most recently crew chief for Don Prudhomme Racing, leaves a legend to join a legend with Bernstein. He’s joining former DPR co-tuner Todd Smith, who was appointed as crew chief after the release of Rob Flynn.

Getting his hands dirty with the tuning challenges pleases Bender.

The ageless John Force earned the provisional pole in Funny Car with a 4.021-second pass at 316.08 mph on the first day of qualifying at the 23rd annual O’Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals Friday.

The other provisional No. 1 qualifiers at the fifth of 23 races in the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series season were Antron Brown (Top Fuel), Mike Edwards (Pro Stock) and Hector Arana (Pro Stock Motorcycle).

Force, now 60 years old, has already won twice this season in his Castrol GTX Ford Mustang and if the No. 1 holds up it would be the 133rd of his career, leaving him just five shy of Warren Johnson (138) on the all-time No. 1 qualifier list. It’s really the one major NHRA milestone that the 14-time NHRA champion and current points leader does not possess.

Jay Payne raced to the provisional No. 1 qualifying lead Friday as the second round of NHRA Get Screened America Pro Mod Drag Racing Series qualifying came to an end at Houston Raceway Park.

Payne, of Ontario, Calif., drove his supercharged 1968 Camaro to a 5.813-second run at 246.21 mph to the provisional top spot of the field. For Payne, it would be his first official No. 1 qualifier at the second event of the inaugural season of the NHRA Get Screened America Pro Mod Drag Racing Series.

Driving a Pro Stock Motorcycle is exhilarating enough without this happening.

Angie Smith was in the midst of qualify run Friday afternoon at Houston Raceway Park when her Coffman Tank Trucks Buell bike caught fire.

“My lower left leg, right by my ankle, was on fire and I used my right shoe and patted it out,” the 30-year-old Smith. “I’m not burned or anything, but my motorcycle is messed up and that hurt my feelings more than anything.”

When Smith took off from the starting line, she didn’t feel or notice any problems, at least initially.

Terry Haddock has good reason to wonder just how conservative he is going to have to be to keep NHRA officials happy. Once he figures it out, then he’ll be able to better describe the manner in which plans to race this weekend at the NHRA Springnationals at Houston Raceway Park.

Haddock suffered two catastrophic engine explosions in the first two events this season forcing NHRA officials to banish him from the series with the added requirement of clean testing passes in a supervised environment before he could return. On the same weekend of the NHRA’s 4-Wide Nationals, the veteran independent nitro racer made six consecutive clean passes ranging from a 4.22 elapsed time to 4.32.

At $5,000 per run, Haddock has paid his tribute to the NHRA for a return.

Ed Hoover spent much of Friday morning at the NHRA Springnationals, thrashing to bring his engine up to code per the NHRA rulebook.

Hoover, a GSA NHRA Pro Mod racer from Columbia, SC, was one of eleven teams flagged for infractions, the result of a spot check of rules pertaining to supercharger opening and wheelbase. He was fine on the wheelbase, but .175 of an inch to large of an opening did him in on the supercharger.

“We just had to shrink the opening a bit,” said Hoover, as he worked away. “They had a rule that I didn’t know about. The supercharger I have is about four years old. They have made some rules since I had this supercharger built.”