Tony Schumacher first defeated Clay Millican but then lost to Billy Torrence. (Ron Lewis photo)

Brown, who has won 53 Mello Yello races including 37 in Top Fuel, extended his championship points lead 77 over DSR teammate Tony Schumacher, who lost in the quarterfinals.

"We're just off to an incredible start," Antron said. "It's just crazy how tough it is out here right now and it just feels good to sneak out of here with another win. You have to push it to the next level every round. I got my butt kicked by (Gateway runner-up Dave) Connolly in Indianapolis and that woke me up. After that, I've just been going to work, putting my head down and my boys have been pushing me. We've been doing it round by round and we're just going to see how long we can ride this roller coaster."

Richie Crampton (Ron Lewis photo)

"It's been a unique race weekend," Richie Crampton said. "Losing Q1 after being underweight put us to the front of the pack for the Friday night session, and then losing that run kinda hurt. Of course, not getting an ET slip out of Q4 (due to a timing system error) and probably losing what was our opportunity to be in the top half of the field definitely contributed to a very unique weekend."

Crampton's pass in the final qualifying session would have been his quickest of the weekend and moved him out of the bottom half of the field. Instead, he qualified No. 10 and had to race past champion Langdon in the first round.

Langdon then made a brilliant pass 3.753 seconds at 329.26 mph, while Crampton's recovering 4.228-second run at 226.92 mph just wasn't enough.