While Evans and Manners were fighting it out for the championship, Samsel was busy winning the event. Samsel ran a solid first round to earn a spot in the final and edged Dave Hill in a great drag race to claim his first career Pro Fuel victory.

“This is actually the first weekend on this car. We just got it together last week and did some testing with it, put it in there and brought it down here,” Samsel said. “We were a little sketchy on where the tune-up was so we hurt a few things, but the car did everything that it was supposed to do and here we are.”

While the championships in Pro Fuel were decided in the final round, the first round set up the epic finals as both Manners and Hamelink lost in the first round and Evans fell short of making the finals despite a strong first round run.

In the opening round Manners lost to Hill, who filled one of the final round spots with the second lowest elapsed time of the first round, and Hamelink lost to Evans. Despite the win, Evans’ pass was not good enough to overcome the two strong rounds by Hill and Samsel.

The Prostalgia Nitro Funny Car battle was much less climactic as Nichols entered the event needing to make rounds and, while Gallen did make it interesting by resetting the class record for elapsed time and winning the event, it was not enough to overcome a strong season by Nichols as the “Mill Road Boys” claimed their first championship.