IDITAROD -- For years Hugh Neff was the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race driver whose team went like crazy from Willow right up to the point it ran out of gas. Sometimes that happened as the race moved over the Alaska Range. Sometimes it happened on the Yukon River. But it inevitably happened, and then Neff struggled to the finish.

His front-running style got his name out there a lot in his first Iditarods but it didn't produce much in the way of results -- 22nd, 26th, 21st, 19th, 25th -- in his first four races. He picked up the nickname "Huge Mess."

By 2009, though, Neff had hooked up with some dogs that could almost keep up with the musher, and he cracked the top 20 for the first time. It got better last year when he finished ninth. But the rap on Neff remained pretty much the same. He lets his teams run too hard too early, but "Look out if he ever gets the team that wants to go as hard as he wants to go."

Whether he has that team this year is not clear, yet, because though Neff is once more at the front he has played Iditarod 39 in an unusually conservative manner -- at least for Neff. He has been near the lead the whole time, but never on the front until beyond halfway at Shageluk.

From there he took off to lead the race to the Yukon River and grab the gourmet, sit-down dinner and bonus money that goes with the accomplishment. And late Friday, he led the race up the Yukon out of Grayling.

The lingering question is this: Has Neff altered his style, or is this just a lead-dog problem?

While he paused for a break Thursday in the ghost town of Iditarod, Neff confessed his dogs seem to like to chase more than lead. Neff followed halfway prize winner Trent Herbst from Idaho and four-time Iditarod champ Martin Buser from Big Lake out of Takotna, then through Ophir and on to Iditarod. Being able to follow other mushers, Neff said, was a big advantage.

At the checkpoint here, Neff talked about Herbst's decision to bolt from Ophir to grab the $3,000 in halfway money, telling the other musher, "I'm damn glad you did. My dogs are chasers.

"It's such a great feeling to do a 120-mile run and the last 10 miles the dogs are doing (Anchorage) Fur Rondy speeds."

Neff called the run to Iditarod his best yet, though his team -- at least on paper -- looked even better on the 65 miles of bad trail between there and the next checkpoint at Shageluk. It was in Shageluk that Neff passed four-time champ Buser to grab the race lead.  Both were in the Yukon River village of Anvik Friday sitting out a mandatory eight-hour rest mushers must take somewhere along the Yukon.

"I just want to get on the river because that's when we fly," Neff said. "I don't have mountain dogs."

Neff appears to be intent on racing up the Yukon, though he insists he's not racing, or at least not racing the way he used to race.

"I'm much more interested in having a good race and doing things right than winning a race," he said.

This attitude might keep some mushers from winning, but in Neff's case it could work in his favor. He was definitely in the mix on Friday with some other mushers, among them Buser and defending champ Lance Mackey from Fairbanks, both struggling a bit.

Mackey is down to nine of the 16 dogs with which he started the race in Willow, and there remain about 500 miles to the finish line in Nome. He didn't sound optimistic in Iditarod.

"It's inevitable that things are going to fall apart someday, sometime," he said. "Success doesn't always mean winning a race."

He joked that the way he has been dropping dogs to injury here or fatigue there, it might be time to check on how many dogs he must have left in the team to be allowed to finish.

"Might have to read the rules before I leave," he said.

For now though, Mackey is still hanging with the lead group as is young Dallas Seavey, the winner of this year's 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada to Fairbanks. He was wrestling with the pace.

"I'm ahead of schedule," he said. "It's tempting to want to keep up with these guys, but I'm not sure it's the best thing (for my dogs). (But) these dogs are looking awesome, so we'll just see what they want to do."

Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com or Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com