Shawn Reed was on fire and still got the first-round win over Doug Kalitta, 3.929/276.35 to 3.971/270.10. Reed got past Steve Torrence in the next round, but fell to Pritchett in the semifinal.

Optimism was high for the U.S. Army driver duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown entering Sunday’s elimination rounds. Despite both drivers posting career-best qualifying runs Friday and Saturday, respectively, the decorated champions couldn’t overcome misfortune.

Antron Brown and Troy Coughlin Jr. during qualifying.

In the second round, Brittany Force faced defending Top Fuel champion Antron Brown, but she was up to the task, making a run of 3.707 seconds at 327.90 mph to get the win, while Brown hazed the tires and slowed to a 5.732-second pass at 103.26 mph.

Tony Schumacher defeated Scott Palmer in the second round, 3.697/326.95 to 3.845/310.84. Palmer defeated Troy Coughlin Jr. in the first round. Coughlin oiled the track, the first oil-down of the season, and lost 5 points.

Force faced Tony Schumacher in the semifinals, but dispatched him with a pass of 3.701 seconds at 329.26 mph. Schumacher slowed to a run of 4.722 at 154.21 mph after his dragster lost a cylinder.

“That was a tough way to go down today,” said Schumacher. “We had a killer light, but lost a cylinder and also had an ignition problem. You can’t tune around problems. Malfunctions like that are malfunctions that are going to come and go. And sometimes you can’t catch a break that way.”