"Aaron, what I love about him is he's not afraid to be aggressive. I've never had a crew chief who thought like that. He's a cautious aggressive. He thinks about things in a really practical way. And it's nice having a crew chief who's close to your age.

"All the things we have right now are putting us in a really good direction."

Things are going in the right direction in Lucas' personal life, too. He recently became engaged to long-time girlfriend Katie Pallone, who joined Lucas in the Victory Lane celebration Monday.

"There's probably not a single person more excited than my fiancé, Katie," Lucas said. "She's just jumping up and down and she couldn't be happy enough for everybody. It's really exciting to turning this into that much more of a family effort."

Lucas dedicated the victory to the late Eric Medlen, who died in 2007 as a result of a crash in practice at Gainesville on a Monday nearly five years ago.

"I've always wanted to win one and dedicate it to him," Lucas said. "Something like this, winning here on Monday, it's almost too coincidental. It's really special to me to have this trophy on our shelf at home. To be able to honor him and (parents) John and Martha, it's a big win for us, and we're going to remember this one all year."

The view in the Khalid alBalooshi pit. The dragster was defeated in the first round by Clay Millican’s holeshot 3.875/315.12 to 3.831/317.42. (Ron Lewis photo)