It was experience against perseverance, this Top Fuel final Sunday at the NHRA Northwest Nationals near Seattle between Antron Brown and Terry McMillen.   

It was a three-time series champion on the verge of 660 round-wins when he arrived against an earnest School of Hard Knocks graduate who had 45 round-wins and treated his crew members to steak dinners when they won a single race-day match-up.

It was top qualifier Brown itching to take the points lead from No. 10 starter Steve Torrence versus McMillen, a seemingly perennially hard-luck Countdown contender trying at the least Sunday to hold onto his No. 8 position in the playoff-eligible field.

It was Brown – racing in his fourth straight final, seventh in the past nine events, and 86th of his Top Fuel career that began in 2008 – versus McMillen, making the third final of his career and the first since this April’s Four-Wide Nationals at Charlotte.

It was Brown – seeking his 49th Top Fuel victory that moves him to within three of Joe Amato for third on the NHRA’s all-time list in less than 10 full seasons in the class – versus McMillen, who was going for his first victory in 188 NHRA races since 2007. (Brown has earned 34 victories since 2012. The next most successful driver in that span is Tony Schumacher with a distant 16.)

In the end, it was Brown in the winners circle with his Matco Tools/Toyota/U.S. Army Dragster. He used  a slight starting-line advantage to claim his second straight and third overall triumph at Seattle. Brown clocked a 3.776-second elapsed time at 326.48 mph to McMillen’s 3.772, 318.54 in the alligator-adorned Amalie Oil Xtermigator Dragster on Pacific Raceways’ 1,000-foot course.

The Don Schumacher racing driver vaulted atop the standings for only his second stint this season. He had the No. 1 ranking for one week in June, between the Englishtown and Bristol races on the so-called “Eastern Swing.”

“It was tough competition, and we were neck-and-neck every round,” Brown said. “The competition has definitely stepped up its game. It’s going to set up some really interesting stuff in the last two races [before the Countdown field of 10 is set for the six-race playoffs].”

Racers have just the Aug. 17-20 Lucas Oil Nationals at Brainerd, Minn., and the Sept. 1-4 Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis to qualify for the Countdown. And the Indianapolis classic carries points and a half, which is sure to have a significant effect on the scramble at the bottom of the Countdown pack.

Brown reached the final round past Ron Smith, Mike Salinas, and Clay Millican. But he was impressed with the daunting lineup McMillen dismissed: Steve Torrence, Doug Kalitta, and Leah Pritchett. McMillen began his march with a 3.725-second blast that was one-thousandth of a second behind Brittany Force’s low E.T. of the meet (3.724) to knock off points leader Torrence.

Brown called McMillen and his Rob Wendland-tuned car “Strong – strong,” shaking his head for emphasis.

“We know what they’re capable of, and I would’ve said [3.]75 would’ve been a great win for Terry first round. But when he threw that .72 out, boy – whoooo! – that turned some heads. He can run mid-.70s to high .70s – but that dude can run low .70s now,” Brown said. “He’s like, ‘Welcome. I’m in the party now, boys. Here I am, ladies and gentlemen. Terry McMillen’s here. Alligator’s chompin’–

“I tell you what – he tried to chomp us up there in that final. He snapped out. I’ve got a tooth mark on my behind right now,” Brown said after advancing to the semi-finals or beyond in 11 of 16 races this season.

“We’ve got to keep fighting like we are. The fight’s only going to get tougher and rougher,” he said. “I’ve got my work cut out for me, and the boys in the shop go a lot of work to do. This Western Swing will beat – you – down.

“I can’t even believe we’ve been going rounds like we have. I couldn’t be more proud of all of my guys. When things get this rough and this hard, I always give God all the glory because He pulls us through every time,” Brown said.

“Think about it,” he said. “We did that good with seven finals in nine races and we just got the lead back by only 13 points. That shows you how tough this field is. All these cars are just stepping up to the plate. I never imagined that you could say you have 12 that could win on any given Sunday, but now’s the time. It’s just a blessing to get another win under our belts. We’ve been to a lot of finals, but we only have four race wins out of nine finals. We aren’t even 50-50 right now. We have to do a lot better than that.”

McMillen, whose first final came at the March 2016 Gatornationals, credits Don Schumacher Racing for his improvement this season. He drives a DSR-built chassis, and his car contains a pile of parts from the well-resourced megateam whose shop is down the street from his at Brownsburg, Ind.  

But McMillen and Wendland and somewhat-green crew performed like veterans Sunday.

The first round of eliminations sharpened the playoff picture a little more for McMillen, as he and his team cooled off one of the hottest drivers and cars and added to his points cushion. McMillen defeated Torrence, a six-time winner and eight-time finalist in the first 15 races.

Afterward, Torrence congratulated McMillen at the top end of the racetrack and said, “I can’t even be mad at you. You flat outran me.”  Later he said, “Terry and those guys did a hell of a job. It was just a great effort on their part.  All you can do is congratulate those guys, suck it up, and get ready for the next one.  We ran our number, what [crew chief Richard] Hogan thought the track would take.  They took their shot and made it work.”

More importantly for McMillen, that added Countdown momentum for McMillen. He advanced to the semifinal round a week ago at Sonoma, Calif., with some gracious and timely help from Millican’s crew and Leeza Diehl, wife of Funny Car racer Jeff Diehl. (And Millican is the No. 7 driver in the standings, who leads McMillen by only 47 points.)

That opening-round victory for still-No. 8-ranked McMillen came after playoff-field challenger Shawn Langdon fell to Mike Salinas, the six-year part-time driver who’s preparing to turn full-timer, and No. 9 Scott Palmer come up a little short against Millican. That left Langdon outside the Countdown-eligible field with only two races – at Brainerd, Minn., and Indianapolis – remaining before the elite 10 are established.

What made that sequence of events even more remarkable for McMillen is the fact that during the course of the previous three races, the Amalie Oil Dragster team lost both the cylinder-head and clutch specialists – one of them had defected to Torrence’s Capco Construction Dragster organization.

“It’s tough for us independent guys to hang on to people. It really is,” McMillen crew chief Rob Wendland said. So we’re in training again.”

He credited Bob Peck for tutoring the young crew, many of whom had no nitro experience before this year.

“If it wasn’t for Bob Peck…I’m telling you, that guy . . . he’s been able to play the fiddle, the drums, and the violin at the same time here lately. It takes a tremendous amount of load off of me to still be able to tune the car and do everything. Bob is one of the best teachers. And there’s so much here that is a life experience teaching them. You can’t teach them how it is between rounds. You can’t teach them those kinds of things, [like] developing a work ethic. We work harder than most teams out here, because we don’t have the depth of parts to keep cycling them in. We have to keep the stuff we’re running tip-top, because we [don’t] have a depth on Sunday. So if we’re around Sunday, that’s our depth.”     

It was enough for McMillen in the quarterfinals, as well. His .085-second reaction time compared to Doug Kalitta’s rather snoozy .118 gave him a pass to the next round with a 3.804-second E.T. That’s an E.T. that would have qualified him no better than ninth here, even on an uncharacteristically hot Seattle racing surface. But it set up a semifinal match against Leah Pritchett, whom he beat at Sonoma to reach last Sunday’s semifinal.

He advanced past her this time, too. Ironically, at Sonoma he beat Pritchett and faced Brown in the semifinal. And Seattle’s semifinal result produced the same scenario, only this time in the money round.

Wendland made sure he pointed out to everyone that the Amalie Oil Dragster team is the only one at the moment in the pro ranks who has a female clutch specialist. But he took special delight in informing the fans that Kaylynn Simmons’s boyfriend, Blake Holding, just happens to be Pritchett’s clutch and tire assistant. He couldn’t resist adding, “And she just kicked his ass!”

Millican was Brown’s semifinal victim, and after his loss, he went to McMillen’s pit to see whether the Amalie team needed him to send any of his Stringer Performance crew members over to help prep the car for the final round.  Funny Car privateer Jeff Diehl had his mechanic’s apron on and was hard at work on the Amalie Dragster within 10 minutes of the semifinal victory.

Brown shared the Seattle winners circle with Funny Car’s Robert Hight and Pro Stock’s Drew Skillman. All received large silver-cup trophies that commemorated this 30th version of the Northwest Nationals. Track President Jason Fiorito presented the special honor, which is anchored by an engraved plaque that lists the names of all 29 previous winners.