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eDRAG RACE e NHRA Winston Drag RacingSeries:Round 6 .. _ ~ David Schultz (near lane) turned in a winning 8.23 second/162.10 mph run to down John Myers (far lan e) at Denver. Myers fouled the start and then blew an engine. c utz owns ersa! enver By Todd Veney DENVER, CO, JUtY23-25 or the 15th tim e since the turn of the decade, John Myers and David Schultz inched toward the staging beams with an NHRA meet win in the balance. No rid ers ha ve ever met in more finals than Myers, 35, th e 1990 and 1992 NHRA Champion, and Schultz, 45, who has won three of the other four champions since 1987. Schultz led 9-5 before the Mile-High Nationals, contested at p icturesqu e Bandimere Speedway, a one-of-a-kind facility cut into the side of the Rocky Mountains jus t we st of Den ver, with the pits a 100-foo t tier above the race tr ack and spectato r parking 100 fee t below. Make it 10-5, Schultz. At the MileHigh Na tionals, as at sea- level strips fro m Ponona, California, to Engli shtown, New Jersey, over the years, Pro Stock's dominating duo survived four qualifying rounds and three rounds of racing to face off in an inevitable final. It was the third time in six ev en ts already this year tha t a Myer s-Schultz confrontation has decided the outcome. (They split the first two 1993 finals the way they seem to take turns winning the NHRA Charnpion-ship.) Myers snapped the season tie with an untimely foul start, but he would F 40 have lost anyway. H is infraction on George Bry ce 's Star Ra cing Suzuki meant onl y that he got two losses out of the way in one race. . Even w it h a perfect reaction time, like his .001 the round be fore, Myers would have been unabl e to hold off Schultz's 8.23, the qu ickest run of the event by half a tenth of a seco nd and just three-hundredths shy of the track . record Myers established when he won last year in the NHRA/Win ston Pro Stock tour's first stop in the mile-high city. "I guess I wasn't going to win that one anyway," sai d Myers, who beat Schultz earlier th is season in the last round at Englishtown, and lost to him for the fourth straight year at Atlanta. "He pa ssed me even before the engine blew up. This thing start ed shaking like a wa shing machine on spin-dry with all the clothes on one si de, th en it just blew up ." Myer s coasted to a resp ectable 8.35 at 149 mph, well off the 160s he'd run in qualifying and in the three preliminary rounds of elim in a tions . After qualifying number o ne wi th an 8.32/1 60, Myers, th e only prev ious event w inner, hit th e sa me spe ed in wins ov er Keith Freeman 's 8.69/159. He clocked at least an 8.33 in all three of tho se ro und s, la rgel y because h is crew chief, Bryce , made tuning decisions based on twice as much data as was available to everyone else. Besides tuning Myers' mach ine, Bryce was back in competition himself for just the third time in five years. He w ent tw o ro unds on a bra nd-new Kosman Suzuki GSXR before losing on a holeshot to Phillips. " We ba sically ha d eig ht qualifying runs here four for John and four for me," Bryce said. "Everyone else had just four, and that really helps at a place like this , where the air is thin. There's no other place like it and it's only our second time up . here, so we 're all still kind of learning as we go." However, Schultz, who ca lled the borrowed bike he rode at the inaugural 1992 Mile-High Nationals "uncompetitiv e " and sa id "last year doesn 't count," caught on quickly. "We 've got a lot of power, we just can't use it all," Schultz said. "(Crew chief) Greg (Cope) came up with a special combination for this place and we're having a hard time getting a hold of the track ." O n wh a t he called "some of the wo rs t, most sideways runs I've ev er made," Schultz still managed to qualify > number two with back-to-hack 8.33s in Saturday's sessi ons , which compared favorably to Myers' 8.38 and 8.50 that day. The eventual winner then moved ahead of Myers' Star Racing team for good in the first round, when he ran an 8.31/159 aga inst Keith Gray's 8.65/155. Schultz's Sunoco Suzuki slipped to an 8.34 in the seco nd ro und opposite Ricky Adson, but he returned to run 8. 280 (low e.t. until his final -round 8.23) in the se mi fina ls aga ins t Byron Hines, who had low e.t, with the 8.283 in round one.versus Steve Johnson. Hines, whose Vance & Hines stable was closely ass ocia ted w ith Schultz's team last year (Schu lt z's transporter still we ars its black, pink and ye llow pa int sche me fro m 1992 - m in us the V&H logo), wen t out of his way to laud Schultz. Before the race, Hines, a master engin e-builder and tun er long before he took his first competition ride, called it: "Dave can set up any bike, then get on it and go out and beat you . He's the best all-around, no doubt about it" Despite los ing, Myers remains on top of the series point standi ngs with five rounds ye t to be run. Myers leads Schultz 5532-4818. John Smith is third with 3878 po ints. COl