Rev-limiters can’t stop him.

Rule changes don’t even come close.

The last hope the Top Fuel field had of slowing down Tony Schumacher was 1,000-foot drag racing and that obstacle only proved nothing more than a hiccup.

“You’re clicking at four tenths of a second earlier, that’s it,” Schumacher said. “Getting the car to go down the track, it’s not like we’re spinning down there at 1000 foot. The rev limiter has cost us some races…when our rev limiter comes in and we get passed at the end, we’re not going to see that now. Coming in [to the race] I said thousand-foot would be to our advantage and a couple of other guys.” Rev-limiters can’t stop him.

Rule changes don’t even come close.

The last hope the Top Fuel field had of slowing down Tony Schumacher was 1,000-foot drag racing and that obstacle only proved nothing more than a hiccup.

“You’re clicking at four tenths of a second earlier, that’s it,” Schumacher said. “Getting the car to go down the track, it’s not like we’re spinning down there at 1000 foot. The rev limiter has cost us some races…when our rev limiter comes in and we get passed at the end, we’re not going to see that now. Coming in [to the race] I said thousand-foot would be to our advantage and a couple of other guys.”

Schumacher easily sent former U.S. Army teammate Antron Brown to the showers with a 4.007 elapsed time at 304.07 miles per hour.

He admitted the thousand foot course took some getting used to after years of running the quarter-mile.

“You know the only thing you see down there are cones,” Schuamcher said. “I think they moved the cones at the quarter-mile out so you don’t see them, it’s not like we know where we are shutting off and I was a little worried about that. If you had more cones at the quarter-mile, if you were going to move those, you have a real tendency to start judging what cones to shut off at and you start looking at them and looking at them. So you drive over there.”

Schumacher’s legendary tuner Alan Johnson never mentioned a thing to him about the cones. His only advice was to hold on tightly early in the run.

“He said ‘Hey man this thing has to leave as hard as it can leave so that when it hit’s the part that is hot it already has momentum,” Schumacher said. “What are you going to do? Second guess him?”

Schumacher’s Top Fuel final round represented the 78th of his career and 8th of this season. The five-time world champion clinched his berth into the Countdown to the Championship two weeks ago and thus far is the only driver to do such.

A REAL RIVALRY – Schumacher looks forward to building a rivalry with Brown. His Denver victory marks his fourth win over Brown in five races during the 2008 season.

“He makes me sit up in the seat and drive hard,” Schumacher admitted. “He’s going to have some tough lessons coming up, I think. He hasn’t had it really hot yet where the car is smoking on every run but he’s a great driver…he will catch on fast. He’s just got to go through the same thing we all went through and that’s just experience. He listens well….he makes the right calls, you know…he knows who to listen to and what advice to take and what to leave aside.

“If it’s me and him at the end battling it out, I’d be proud to have him as my adversary down there. Now that’s a rival.”

Essentially Schumacher is throwing out the drag racing version of “shock & awe” early in the 2008 season. He’s gone 15 races without a first round loss dating back to last season. His previous streak was 17 races.

“This is unbelievable,” Schumacher said. “As your career goes different things happen at different times. I always said my 13 years of racing have not been decided on the starting line. It has been decided by big moments and last year we’d have a car that would smoke the tires as we did in Chicago, as we did in Englishtown but the other guy wouldn‘t and that’s just bad luck. This year we are having the good luck and I just think it goes around and equals itself out.”

Schumacher’s victory marked the 110th for Don Schumacher Racing.

WHAT A ROOKIE SEASON – Brown may not be eligible to win the NHRA’s Rookie of the Year award, but his peers know he’s doing well for a freshman driver.

Brown really wanted to win that final round with Schumacher.

“Man, that was a tough one to lose, but it was a great weekend for our Matco Tools team,” Brown said. “It’s tough racing up here on the mountain, but Bandimere Speedway is an awesome facility. We wanted to win this one for Lee Beard being his hometown race track and we came close. Tony (Schumacher) and that Army team are awesome. They motivate us to keep working harder and that’s what we’re going to do. It was a great start to the Western Swing and we’re going to try and get one round further at Seattle next Sunday.”

Brown has won two events thus far in his rookie season in four final rounds.

NOT HAPPY – Rod Fuller’s new t-shirts worn by himself and the crew at the Mopar Big Block party went over as well as flatulence at the dinner table. The controversial shirts in question portrayed a circus monkey image holding a glow stick. On the back, “Welcome to the Dark Side” was emblazoned brightly in reference to his jab at Don Schumacher Racing earlier this year.

Both sides were in reference to jawing between Fuller and current world champion Tony Schumacher.

One might think the greater offense was taken by the Schumacher camp, but such was apparently not the case.

David Powers Motorsports crew chief Lee Beard, who tunes the Matco Tools dragster piloted by Antron Brown, according to sources, didn’t take too kindly to the joke. According to sources, the shirts were done unbeknownst to the upper management at DPM.

The issue remained mum for the most part throughout the weekend. When NHRA top end announcer Alan Reinhart asked Schumacher a question as to whether the final round match would be a battle between rivals, the floodgates were opened.

“They’ve got a little turmoil in the middle, and Lee Beard wasn’t too happy with those t-shirts,” Schumacher said. “Antron is a great dude and he called me to tell me that he wasn’t a part of that [the t-shirt]. I know that for a fact because he was my teammate. He has a lot of class.

“Just because those guys are teammates you can’t classify them the same way. They’re tough. They show us respect and we show them respect.”