Brown earned his 285th career round win by edging Morgan Lucas in one of the closest races of the day. Brown got the slight jump out of the starting gate in the Matco Tools/DirecTV car and made it hold to score the holeshot win over the Geico/Lucas Oil car. The 16-time Pro Stock Motorcycle winner posted a lap of 4.042 at 296.70 to hold off Lucas's hard-charging lap of 4.034 at 292.52. Brown is now 3-0 against the 2009 Atlanta Top Fuel winner this season.

Brown advanced to his sixth final round of the season by edging Spencer Massey, the 2009 Rookie of the Year frontrunner, in the semifinals. Two of the better leavers in Top Fuel used nearly identical reaction times as Brown powered the Matco Tools/Lend America rail to a lap of 4.003 at 292.71 to advance to the money round for the 44th time in his career. Massey's Don Prudhomme-owned dragster dropped a cylinder and clocked a pass of 4.159 at 259.71. Brown is now 1-1 against Massey.

Following a brief afternoon rain shower, Brown used Corradi and Oswald horsepower to score his first career win at Bandimere Speedway. Brown, who posted a runner-up finish to Tony Schumacher at the Denver race last July, used a lap of 3.944 at 295.21 to earn the win light in the left lane at Bandimere in the Matco Tools/Toyota rail. Scott Kalitta's black dragster broke and coasted to a run of 11.363-seconds. Brown is now three for six in final rounds this season. The win avenged a season-opening final round loss to Kalitta at Pomona, Calif., in February. Brown is now 5-3 in eight races against Kalitta.

"I'm just glad to get this monkey of my back," Brown said. "It's awesome to win here at Denver. It's a great track and the Bandimere's are great people. It wasn't a dominating day, but a good day. We didn't have lane choice after first round. This is such a tough track to tame. It throws you so many curveballs. The sun is in, then it's out. There's cloud cover, then the clouds go away. The crew chiefs really have their work cut out racing here and Mark (Oswald) and Brian (Corradi) did a fantastic job. It was a tough day racing guys who can cut down the tree like Spencer Massey and Morgan Lucas. I'm just glad to get the monkey off our backs and win a race from the No. 1 qualifying spot. It feels great."

Doug Kalitta, a 31-time Top Fuel event winner and driver of the 8,000-horsepower No. 50 Kalitta Motorsports Top Fuel dragster, made his third final-round appearance of the 2009 Full Throttle Drag Racing Series.

After qualifying with a season-best No. 6 spot (3.975 seconds, 300.80 mph) on the eliminations ladder, Kalitta defeated No. 11 qualifier Clay Millican in the opening round, 4.097 seconds, 295.79 mph to 4.183 sec. It was the third consecutive event that the two Top Fuel dragster competitors met in the opening stanza with Kalitta getting his first victory of the three meetings in Denver.