As one of only a handful of pro drivers to have won an NHRA championship after starting the Countdown from a position outside the top five, Brittany Force knows full well that once you’re in it, you certainly can win it.

Nevertheless, the reality is that the championship almost always goes to drivers who start the playoffs from a position higher than the No. 10 slot in which the two-time Top Fuel World Champion and her Monster Energy Chevrolet team find themselves entering this week’s 42nd Lucas Oil Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway.

The 38-year-old daughter of drag racing legend and 11-time Brainerd Funny Car champion John Force won the 2022 series title from the No. 1 starting position in a dominant season. However, she claimed the first of her two titles five years earlier, winning three of the six Countdown races after starting sixth.

“Doing well in Brainerd is going to be critical,” said the 2013 NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year. “(After early season struggles), we have shown improvement in qualifying, but our focus this week needs to be going rounds on race day to move up out of the No. 10 spot. 

“Tenth is a risky position this late in the regular season and we need to move up to a safer spot before the points are reset for the Countdown (following the Labor Day U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, Ind.),” she said.

“I’m very confident in this David Grubnic and John Collins-run team,” said the 16-time Mission Foods tour winner, referencing the crew chiefs on her national record-holding dragster. “We have a lot of work to do, but we have momentum coming off a big win in the Night Under Fire two weeks ago at Norwalk (Ohio) and a semifinal finish at Sonoma (Calif.) the last time we raced for points.”

In addition to a 2016 victory in the Lucas Oil Nationals, Brittany was runner-up in 2015 and has been the No. 1 qualifier in three of her last four starts at BIR.

While 54 of the 68 pro champions crowned during the Countdown Era have started the playoffs fourth are higher, Force knows that victory is possible from further back in the order, as far back, even, as her current No. 10, the position from which John Force Racing president Robert Hight won the Funny Car championship in 2009.

Before she starts collecting points toward a position improvement in Sunday’s eliminations, she’ll race Saturday in the Mission #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge, opposing the tour’s most recent winner, Antron Brown, with a chance thereafter to race for her second #2Fast2Tasty bonus in the last five events.