A lot of attention is often focused on final eliminations at NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series events, and rightly so -- that's where the real points are earned -- but savvy race fans who choose to take in three qualifying days at the Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals will see another pitched battle Thursday through Saturday. World championship contenders such as Robert Hight in Funny Car and points leader Matt Smith in Pro Stock Motorcycle will fight for what seems to be an almost inconsequential number of points.

A maximum of just eight points is available in qualifying, but the single-digit points that racers accumulate may well decide the season's champions in those two classes. Points are awarded on a sliding scale (see sidebar), with eight points going to the low qualifier and one to qualifiers 13 through 16.

With 20 points awarded for each round-win, Funny Car points leader Cruz Pedregon's 12-point edge on Tim Wilkerson is a simple matter of survival; Wilkerson can pass "the Cruzer" by going one round further than the tour's recent two-time winner, but it gets a little more complicated beyond that. Las Vegas runner-up Hight, who sits in third place, is 39 points (or just less than two rounds worth of points) behind Pedregon and would love to stay there through qualifying. If Automobile Club of Southern California Ford driver Hight can match or outqualify Pedregon's Advance Auto Parts Toyota, he'll need only to win two more rounds than the 1992 world champ to pass him. But if Pedregon outpaces Hight in qualifying, Hight will need to go three rounds further to claim the crown, no small feat considering the way that Pedregon's Rahn Tobler-tuned Toyota has been running.

Funny Car qualifying at the Auto Club NHRA Finals will pit  Cruz Pedregon crew chief Rahn Tobler, left, against the likes of Dickie Venables, who tunes for Tony Pedregon, in a mini battle that may help decide the title.

The sledding is even tougher for Pedregon's younger brother, Tony, who is 62 points behind, and for Jack Beckman, who is 64 back. At that range, both need to go four rounds further than Cruz, meaning that a first-round win by Cruz would lock them out of the title; even if Cruz loses in the first round, one of them will need to win the event to get to the top spot, so those two drivers will try desperately to get their deficits under the 60-point mark to give them at least a bit of breathing room.

Pro Stock Motorcycle points leader Smith, who has been in first place since mid-August, nearly relinquished his lead in Las Vegas after losing a pivotal semifinal battle with hard-charging Harley-Davidson rider Eddie Krawiec. Only Krawiec’s bobble in the final round against Chris Rivas kept Smith’s lead intact, although it has been reduced to just 19 points over Krawiec and 39 points over Rivas.

As in Funny Car, Krawiec and Rivas would love to outqualify Smith to cut their respective workloads by a round. Krawiec would just need to go one round further than Smith and Rivas just two rounds. Conversely, if Smith outqualifies them by enough spots, he can push them a full round further behind.

With the points this close, the specter of a tie always exists. If, for example, Smith outqualifies Krawiec by one position and gains back a point to make the difference an even 20 points heading into eliminations, the chances for a tie are very real.

The NHRA world championship tiebreaker is a three-step process. The first tiebreaker is number of rounds won in the Countdown playoffs.The second is the head-to-head record of the tied racers. The final tiebreaker is the average qualifying e.t. of the racer's best qualifying efforts of the playoffs.