Langdon's teammate and car owner, Morgan Lucas, is off to a slightly slower start, finishing the day 16th overall with an off-pace 5.550 at 119.32 mph in his GEICO Powersports/Lucas Oil dragster.

"These might have been the best conditions we've seen all year," Langdon said after climbing out of his Lucas Oil/Dixie Chopper dragster. "Our car really wanted to run. The fuse was a little short both runs but at least we made it far enough down the track in Round 2 to post a decent time. We're seventh right now but there is a lot more in there, for sure.

"We should be able to move up tomorrow, even though both rounds are in the daytime. It's cool enough and the track is in really good shape. I think we'll see a lot of movement."

Lucas and crew tuned a little too much horsepower into their dragster in Round 1, which resulted in tire smoke. In the second round, they backed the car down too far and the underpowered car went into tire shake, forcing Lucas to pedal the car to get it down the track.

"We reached the limits on both ends of the tune-up," Lucas said. "I'm thinking it will go straight down the track tomorrow. Of course you'd like to start off better than the 16th spot but I'm really not concerned about it because the conditions are so good that we'll be able to run hard. You look at what the other cars ran today and you just want to get after it that much more.

"We're looking at the Countdown to 1 as our time to have some fun and just drag race with our friends. We aren't putting pressure on ourselves. Shawn's up there in the championship mix right now and if we can help him win the title and secure the Rookie of the Year award then we'll do that. As long as the team succeeds, we all succeed."

Seventeen Top Fuel dragsters attempted passes Friday. Saturday's final two time trials are scheduled for noon and 3 p.m.

Courtesy of Rob Geiger