It was a Top Fuel final round of fire and ice: red-hot Antron Brown, the three-time and most recent winner, and frosty-and-frustrated Tony Schumacher, who hadn't won in more than a calendar year.   

Schumacher's stone-cold stint in the U.S. Army Dragster melted Sunday at Bandimere Speedway as he won the Mopar Mile-High Nationals with a 3.802-second, 324.28-mph 1,000-foot pass.

Brown lost traction early in the Matco Tools/Toyota Dragster, as Schumacher sped away. Brown clocked a 5.199-second elapsed time at 144.75 mph uncharacteristic of the reigning champion who just two weeks ago regained the points lead with his victory at Chicago.

The $50,000 victory, the first for Schumacher since the 2015 Chicago race, was his third at the Morrison, Colo., venue he said he loves.

Even before his hauler parked on the grounds this past week, Schumacher said he was thrilled to be at Denver, despite the one-off set-ups every team has to perfect then ignore until next July. For Schumacher, the facility has been paradise.

"Denver is a place I can just be thankful for the absolute lack of bad memories I have there. It's zero," he said. "Even though we lost in the first round there two years ago, we were No. 1 qualifier for the first time that year and that sort of kicked off the momentum that carried us through the championship. Last year, we came back and qualified second and lost a close race to Steve Torrence in the final.

"There are no bad memories about Denver, from the Harley rides, to the fly fishing to the beautiful golf courses. And John Bandimere has built us a beautiful racetrack, tucked into a mountain. You just can't get enough of it, and I really enjoy it," Schumacher said. "It's a difficult race, because you have to make horsepower in a set of circumstances that doesn't really apply well to a Top Fuel dragster. But, at the end of the day on Sunday, there's a winner and you just have to be the guy who not necessarily sets a world record, but goes faster than everybody else. We've been fortunate enough to do that. We love going to Bandimere, we love going to Denver, and I just can't wait to get there."

Right now, after ending a 23-race drought, he might not want to leave.

Earning a spot in the Traxxas Shootout, the $100,000-to-win bonus race that will take place at Indianapolis in September, was a huge deal for Schumacher. And the emphasis was on the word "earning."

Schumacher makes several hundred speeches a year to youth groups, and his core message to them is that nobody gets rewards for trying hard or being nice or showing up – people have to earn achievements. He said had he not earned a berth in the bonus race by virtue of a victory he would have asked fans not to vote for him to fill the fan-favorite slot. He said he would have been hypocritical, said he couldn't with a clear conscience tell these youngsters what he does, then say to drag-racing fans, "I didn’t earn it, but I want a shot. Vote for me."

Now he doesn’t have to worry about that. His earnest Mike Green- and Neal Strausbaugh-led team solved some of their year-long problems Sunday.

"Thank God we figured it out," Schumacher said.

He admitted to a sagging sense of progress by this point in the season: "You start to lose a little faith when you make big changes to a car and you don’t see those win lights. It's a very difficult thing. But to win a championship, you don’t try to bring out an equal car with everyone else. You try to have smart people design smart cars that do things that other cars can't do. It's what we are great at, the adaptability we talk about so much with the Army car."

Schumacher advanced to his third final round of the season by eliminating Doug Kalitta, Steve Torrence, and Clay Millican.

"To win one of these trophies, you have to beat some bad dudes," he said. "I had to beat the baddest of all [in the final]: my teammate, who probably will go down as one of the greatest drivers to walk the face of the Earth. Antron is as good as it comes. He is a naturally talented driver."

Schumacher, who also won here in 2005 and 2008, shared the winners circle with John Force (Funny Car), Allen Johnson (Pro Stock), and Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle).

Brown said, "We got to the finals and we thought we could run a 3.80 or a 3.79, but the track just got a little hot and a little greasy for us and it couldn't handle what we tried to lay down. Our teammate Tony and the Army car just put down a great lap, and they deserve it."

For Brown, the competition seemed to be Man Versus Mountain.

"Coming to the mountain is always very hard and very challenging," Brown said after the final. "The mountain tried to kick our butt a little bit in qualifying but this whole Matco crew did what they always do and that's figure it out. And we always put our best foot forward to race competitively on race day. I couldn't be more proud to be on this team and doing what we are doing.

"We started off with the track giving us fits and we had a lot of confusion. We started off in one direction, then we went off in another direction and then we ended up coming back and going past the original direction. We ended up nailing that run on Saturday night to make us No. 2 and that really set our tone for today," Brown said. "The big thing is we made a great weekend out of a weekend that didn't start off very good."

And Schumacher made a great weekend out of a season that didn’t start off so hot.