Although both had nearly identical Reaction Times (.063 for Force and .064 for Brown) Brown’s 3.814 at 317.34 took the win over Force’s 3.850 at a faster 320.89 mph.

Along the way to her second final round Top Fuel appearance, Brittany Force faced Terry McMillen in the opening round. At the first hint of green from the Christmas tree, Brittany and McMillen’s dragsters leapt off the starting simultaneously, as both drivers had nearly identical reaction times. The Castrol EDGE Dragster went right down the track and posted a winning 3.828-second pass to McMillen’s tire smoking 9.608-second time.

Going into the quarterfinals, Brittany Force ran reigning To Fuel champion Shawn Langdon. Brittany was 0-2 against Langdon in prior events. Once again, the reaction times between Brittany and her opponent were nearly identical, as Brittany had .074 to Langdon’s .075. Again, both dragsters left the starting together but then Langdon’s slicks went up in smoke. For Brittany, her Castrol EDGE Dragster went right down the groove and got the win with her 3.940-second run.

In the semifinals, Brittany raced J.R. Todd. Brittany was 1 - 0 against Todd in prior events. Todd took a starting line advantage and led almost to the finish line, the Castrol EDGE Dragster drove around Todd at the finish line stripe and got the win by a mere 0.0018 seconds which is approximately 10 inches.

A fast turnaround for the live TV coverage once again pushed the team to the edge of time allowed.

Antron Brown introduces Brittany Force to “Wally.”

“Honestly, I don’t even know what happened on that last run, everything went by so fast,” Force said of her match-up against Brown, “we didn’t have time to warm up, I got ready in the pits, and we pulled up there and I thought; okay, I’ll have a moment to get in and take a deep breath, and there were funny cars going down the track, and we were the next pair, so I jumped in, suited up and didn¹t have time to think about anything, so before I knew it, the tree was coming down and we were heading down there. I knew I had to cut a good light, because Antron (Brown) always has good lights, so that was my number one thing I wanted to do ­ make sure the crew guys know that I’m working hard and working on my tree, and I left on him, by a little bit, and I’m happy about that. I’m proud of every single one of these guys, because they’ve worked so hard this weekend, and even though we went out in the final, it’s still a great weekend. We had a consistent car ­ it went down the track every single round and I’m so proud of these guys. I’m excited ­ I’m pumped now for Norwalk,” said Brittany Force.