Both Shawn Langdon and Tony Schumacher had been telling everyone for weeks that it was just a matter of time before he made it back into the NHRA winners circle.

So something had to give Sunday when the two champions from the Don Schumacher Racing organization faced each other in the Top Fuel final round of the Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway.

Langdon relied on his trademark quickness at the Christmas tree to defeat Schumacher, winning for the first time since last year’s season finale in November at Pomona, Calif.

The Red Fuel Dragster racer earned his 12th Top Fuel trophy with a 3.838-second elapsed time at 322.19 mph on the East Tennessee 1,000-foot course. Schumacher clocked 3.924, 310.70 in the U.S. Army Dragster’s second consecutive final-round appearance.

The first sound from Langdon in his winner’s interview was a sigh, and that said it all. This victory, only the third in a year and a half from the 2013 series champion who underwent career-altering changes in 2015 because of an unexpected funding crisis, lifted a pile of bricks from his shoulders.

“It feels good in so many ways to get the win today. We beat some really good teams today,” he said, exhausted after advancing past Terry McMillen, Brittany Force, and Doug Kalitta.

“The pressure started rolling in a little bit,” Langdon said, after he began this season with five first-round defeats that mired him in as lowly a spot in the standings as 13th place. People were bombarding with questions about why he couldn’t get past the first or second round and what was wrong with his car.

But Langdon knew crew chiefs Todd Okuhara and Phil Shuler were inching closer and closer to having the car ready to mow down the competition. He had improved to the point he had reached two semifinals in the previous four races. So he knew he could get back to that stage where he was in 2013, when he won seven times in 10 finals, return to the driver who had 18 No. 1 qualifiers and 11 victories in 25 finals. He saw progress after defying odds last year to win the first and last events on the schedule, despite having his team’s funding whisked away abruptly just before the 2015 season began.

He knew how much Tony Schumacher wanted to step out of his Top Fuel funk, as well, and record a sixth Bristol victory.

“Tony, his record speaks for itself. I knew I had to step it up,” Langdon said.

So he turned to what he knew best. He had to leave the starting line first.

And he did, launching in .036 of a second to the equally capable Schumacher’s .065.

However, Langdon said “adrenaline and a little bit of luck” played a part of his second Bristol victory, which made him 4-1 against Schumacher in final rounds and earned him an automatic berth in the Traxxas Top Fuel Shootout that will take place in September at Indianapolis and pays $100,000 to win.

“It’s one of those things you really don’t concentrate on throughout the season,” Langdon said of the bonus race. “But as other teams were winning – and it’s not like it’s a do-or-die thing – you keep seeing these spots go away. You don’t want to take it down to a fan vote, because you never know what’s going to happen.”

Now he knows.

Now he’s going to be in the running for 100-grand.

Now he’s a 2016 winner.

Now he’s on his way to try to win again in this coming weekend’s conclusion to the four-race Eastern Swing, at Norwalk, Ohio.

Langdon took advantage of the fact Schumacher dropped a cylinder early in that final run.

Schumacher said, “That’s disappointing, for one thing because we really want that spot in the Shootout. We’re running out of spaces there. There’s only one spot left. But we’re running so well, consistent every week. It feels a little ridiculous to be in the finals and get beat. But, hey, it is what it is. With that hole out right away, it wasn’t  a fun race for a final. We’d been running better than them three or four hundredths every run, so we went up there thinking this would be a great race to win. It was a letdown by just the fact that we didn’t get it done. We’d  been running too darn well, machine-like, for the last two days. To get to the end and let it get away like that, it’s just frustrating.”

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