Competing against Schumacher for the fourth time this season, the top two drivers in the points standings put on a great show for the fans at Pacific Raceways. Brown got a slight jump out of the starting gate and used a Corradi and Oswald tune-up of 3.985 at 301.07 to score the narrow victory over the U.S. Army rail. The Mike Green-tuned car posted a run of 3.990 at 300.00 in a photo-finish race. Brown now has a record of 34-10 this season.

"We didn't really run that bad in qualifying here this weekend; in Denver we were the quickest and fastest of qualifying, but the sun came out on race day and that's been our Achilles heel," Brown said. "It was hard to stay hooked up out there this weekend. We ran 4.00 on our last qualifying pass and that was a really good run and gave us a lot of confidence going into race day.

"We just want to race to the best of our ability and take it one round at a time. That race against Clay (Millican) was close. We still spun the tires there, but after that our car was on point all day long. Brian (Corradi) and Mark (Oswald) made great calls today. That race against Tony (Schumacher) was awesome. To win by eight thousandths (of-a-second) just shows what a great drag race it really was. It felt so good to get the win light against those guys because we were the bridesmaid against them so many times last year. It really felt great to be on the winning end. We'll go to Sonoma (Calif.) and take it one round at a time just like we did here this weekend and all season long."

Staring at Sunday’s first-round opponent – NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series leader Antron Brown – crew chief Lance Larsen did what he thought was needed to get Clay Millican and the LifeLockracing.com Top Fuel dragster into the quarterfinals.