Mike Dunn, near lane, whose four runs in eliminations were quicker than any other driver's best, trailed Ed McCulloch from one end to the other in the Funny Car final, but he had it all the way after McCulloch fouled.

Between 1987 and 1991, crew chief Tim Richards made Joe Amato the undisputed Top Fuel king of Bandimere Speedway and the Mopar Parts Mile-High Nationals.

The only thing Amato didn't do in 1991 was reestablish an all-time performance record, as he had done in 1990 when he ran 5.10 in the under-the-lights final.

That thunder was stolen by Lori Johns, who did something no driver in any Pro category had done at any race in years when she broke the track record by more than a tenth of a second, bypassing the 5.0s entirely and lowering the e.t. mark from Amato's 5.10 to a shocking 4.99.

By all accounts, it was the run of the 1991 season and is still remembered as perhaps one of the most improbable in the history of the sport.

But Johns, who also held the quickest run in the heat of the day, a 5.11, slipped considerably in eliminations, surviving the first round with an off-pace 5.40 and losing the second to Tommy Johnson Jr., 5.26 to 5.27.

A round later, the 23-year-old Johnson nipped his lifelong hero and future boss, Don "the Snake" Prudhomme, who was denied victory in an event he easily could have won but lost when his dragster experienced mechanical breakage for the fifth time during the season.

The blower belt on "the Snake's" engine came off at the 1,000-foot mark, allowing Johnson to slip by, 5.28 to 5.34.

As expected, Johnson left first in the final with a clutch .427 reaction time and sped to a 5.25. But Amato, who defeated veteran Jimmy Nix, 1983 Mile-High Nationals Funny Car champ Frank Hawley, and perennial fan favorite Eddie Hill with progressively quicker runs of 5.21, 5.16, and 5.09, respectively, made the second-quickest high-altitude run of all time, a 5.05, to score his fourth straight on the mountain.

Like Amato, Funny Car king Mike Dunn utterly dominated eliminations after qualifying third. His slowest race-day run (5.48) was considerably quicker than any other Funny Car driver's best (5.54).

Qualifying was ruled by defending Mile-High Nationals champion Ed McCulloch, who equaled his 5.45 track record from 1990, then reset it with a 5.43.

Warren Johnson, near lane, and teammate Scott Geoffrion met in the Pro Stock final, marking only the second time in the factory hot rod ranks that two team cars squared off in a final. Not surprisingly, Johnson's 7.64 stopped Geoffrion's 7.76, ending Johnson's dry spell on the mountain that dated to 1984, when W.J. last won in Denver.

Ominous clouds hovered over the track while McCulloch and John Force turned the first side-by-side 5.4s, and rain came down just before the next pair fired and washed out the remainder of qualifying.

But McCulloch, like the other competitive Funny Car drivers, was mired in the 5.5s in eliminations, taking decisions from Len Seroka, Gary Densham, and Al Hofmann.

E.B. Abel's Snickers/Kmart Dodge, tuned by Dunn's father, Jim, ripped a 5.44 to take care of Tom Hoover, a 5.48 to trailer two-time 1991 national event winner Del Worsham's 5.48, and a 5.44 to stop season-long points leader Force.

Both drivers maintained their performance profiles in the final — McCulloch clocked a 5.54 and Dunn a 5.47 — but the outcome had nothing to do with the elapsed times. McCulloch invalidated his time with a rare red-light start, handing Dunn the win.

In the Pro Stock semifinals, when Scott Geoffrion became the first driver in 1991 other than his teammate, Warren Johnson, to defeat the practically unbeatable Mopar Parts-backed Dodge Daytona driven by Darrell Alderman, he also ensured the first all-team Pro Stock final since Johnson defeated fellow Goodwrench racer Don Coonce in the last round of the 1986 Summernationals.

In the final four, Johnson, who ripped 7.6s on all of his full runs, left slightly ahead of and steadily pulled away from archrival Bob Glidden — who to that time had captured the most titles in Denver with six — with the fastest thin-air Pro Stock run in history, a 7.64 at 180.39 mph. W.J.'s run was the first to exceed 180 mph and his fourth of five sub-7.66 shots during the course of the event.

Johnson, who had qualified on the pole with another 7.64, recorded yet another in the final to stop Geoffrion, who fell off his earlier low 7.7-second pace to a 7.76 after leaving first with his best reaction time of the event, a .443.

With his victory in Alcohol Funny Car, Pat Austin mathematically clinched the 1991 Winston Alcohol Funny Car title, which gave him the first perfect season in Sportsman competition with 10 event victories (five national and five divisional).

The 1991 event was marred by tragedy when Joe Pisano, inventor of the JP-1 aluminum Hemi engine and owner of Venolia, suffered a heart attack on his way back to the pit area after Dale Pulde's checkout pass in the Pisano Funny Car. He was revived and airlifted to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.