It’s quite uncommon for a lone qualifying session of Pro Stock, particularly one in which neither a national or track record was reset or even approached, to serve as the story of an entire weekend, and arguably one of the bigger talking points of the season. But then, nothing about the factory hot rod category has been typical in 2016.

During Friday evening’s second round of qualifying at the K&N Filters Route 66 NHRA Nationals near Chicago, Shane Gray accomplished what no other driver in the short, six-month-long EFI-era of Pro Stock has been able to, when he outran the KB Racing team of Greg Anderson and Jason Line. The Summit Racing-backed machines have, as most are aware, gone unbeaten, untied, and unsecured upon in 2016, winning every race, gobbling up every No. 1 qualifying award, and dominating each and every session of qualifying held in the season’s first 11 races.

While their dominance isn’t exactly unheard of in the long history of Pro Stock  —  Bob Glidden once won nine races in a row and qualified atop the field 23 straight times — it’s come at a particularly troubling time for the once-great class which is struggling to maintain credibility with the fans. And with one team winning everything, the crowds have been increasingly curious if or when someone would return fire.

Gray delivered that first nick in the KB Racing squad’s fortified armor in 6.578-seconds at 209.43 mph — not just squeaking out a small edge over second-place Bo Butner (also a KB Racing-powered car), but putting a full .021-seconds on the field at the time. Anderson paced the opening session and Line the third, but Gray proved his No. 1 qualifying effort was no fluke by outrunning the field in the fourth and final session with a 6.587, .011-seconds quicker than anyone else.

“Well, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but I’d say we’ve caught up to them at this race,” Gray said after garnering his first top qualifier award of the season. “We’ll see where we’re at with that at a couple of races down the road.

Gray was quick to credit his team for their unending efforts this season, culminating in the first No. 1 qualifying award earned this season by a team other than KB Racing.

“Hats off to everybody involved in Gray Motorsports. My dad has supported us for going on 10 years now. We couldn’t do this without him. We couldn’t do it without anybody I’ve got. We have a great core group of guys working on the car. Some of them have been with me for seven years now, so they’re all like family.

“We’re having fun out here. When you have fun, you do well, and we’re doing well, so look out.”

Gray, riding a wave of confidence after his qualifying performance, went on to assert his belief that the tide is soon to change in Pro Stock. And, with the title-deciding Countdown to the Championship less than two months away, that’s a positive sign for the rest of the class.

“I think there are a lot of cars out there that are just as capable of running as fast as KB or as fast as Gray Motorsports,” Gray said. “Some of us just haven’t turned all the right screws yet, but every race we go to with the fuel injection is different. We’ll to Denver (next event) and some of the guys that aren’t quite as fast in Chicago may be much better there.

“It’s harder now than it was before. It’s harder to find that right combination. We’ve stumbled onto that right combination this weekend, but we’ve been working really hard to stumble onto those small things that add up to what we’re seeing in the race car now.”

“We’re just going to keep digging. I can promise you we’re going to outrun those KB cars on Sunday at some point in time here very soon. I don’t give a damn what we do, but that’s one of the things we will do.”