Capps and Bazemore have raced each other 19 times with Capps getting eight wins and Bazemore 11. In final round competition, Capps has two wins to Bazemore's one win. The last time these two met was at Las Vegas last fall when Capps beat Bazemore in the second round. Their last final round competition came at Brainerd in 2001. At that race, Capps beat Bazemore to win the Funny Car division. Capps's last trip to the finals was at Phoenix this year when he beat Gary Densham. Bazemore last made it to the finals at Bristol when he lost to Del Worsham. This is Bazemore's thirty-first trip to the finals and his record before this is 12 wins and 18 losses. Capps has 14 wins and 15 losses in his previous 29 final round appearances.

Capps launched and started to smoke the tires at the 60-foot mark. He pedaled and when he got back into it, he smoked and shook the tires again. That sent his car fishtailing across the track. Capps had to get off the throttle to get the car back under control. Bazemore shook the tires a bit at the start but stayed with it and had a good run going until he lost some cylinders at the end of the track. But with Capps still at mid track and coasting the rest of the way, Bazemore got the win.