Tony Bartone knew he could not lose the Top Fuel final round at the California Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield, Ca. With a third consecutive championship on the line, Bartone defeated past Heritage Series champion Jim Murphy to take home yet another title. 

Bartone, who entered the final round as the No. 1 qualifier, ran a 5.600 elapsed time at 247.25 miles per hour to easily defeat Murphy's 9.519, 74.74.

You know something, you go, you try to win them all," Bartone said. "You battle a lot of things that could go wrong. You know I gotta tell you something, as soon as I won today, somebody texted me. They said, “You are the man”. I said, “Nope”, I said, 'We’ve got the TEAM." 

"It takes a team effort. We got great guys, a lot of depth, and we just squeaked out this championship this year, and we’re all proud as hell of it. And, you know, we worked hard, we put a lot of effort into the program. We’re here to do one thing, and we’ve been doing that."

Bartone earned his way into the finals on the strength of wins over Bret Williamson and Adam Sorokin. This year, unlike the previous two, Bartone was forced to battle to the very end to preserve his chances of winning.

"You know, there’s nothing like winning," Bartone said. "There’s nothing like winning a race. There’s nothing like winning a championship. There’s excitement on the line anyway you shake it. I’m an emotional guy; I get pumped up for this stuff. We had a great day, great team, and I couldn’t be happier."

While Bartone is unsure of his racing future, he is sure of one aspect.

"I hope they add races," Bartone said. "We need races. We need more races. I’d like to see another couple, two, three, four races in the series. But, we’ll see."