Points leader Capps is 124 ahead of Beckman, who is second. Two weeks ago near Chicago, Beckman beat Capps in the championship round for his first title of the season.
"There are still five races and a lot of points before the field is set for the Countdown (to the Championship playoff), but the first round Sunday is big."
Beckman has a good sense of humor and a joke he made Saturday at Bandimere was based more in fact than fiction.
"As drivers we love coming to the mountain because Bandimere is a great facility and the fans are some of the best we see all year. And the crew chiefs can't wait to see it in their rearview mirrors when they're leaving Sunday night."
The mile-high altitude chokes the 10,000-horsepower HEMI engines of power and qualifying added variables of heat and rain delays on Saturday and Sunday.
Beckman's Infinite Hero Dodge Charger R/T led by crew chief Jimmy Prock and funded by Terry Chandler weren't able to get to the finish line Friday under power on both runs but rallied early Saturday evening with a 4.046-second run at 313.58 in the third session and further improved on the last run with a time of 3.985 at 312.78 mph.
On his last run, he became the sixth Funny Car driver at Bandimere to crack into the 3-second zone. He joined with Del Worsham in the other lane who ran a 3.969 for the first side-by-side 3s at the track.
The Infinite Hero Dodge will start No. 6 in Sunday's championship eliminations beginning at 11 a.m. (MT) with the final rounds televised live on Fox to mark the first time in NHRA history that an event was televised live on a national network.
"Our first two runs on Friday the front tires came off the ground and I was thinking, 'Wow, so that's what happens when you're pushing hard.' It's the first time we've been back (to Bandimere) with this style of header and we don't want to hurt the racecar too badly. It knocked the alignment out and it probably isn't as perfect as it was when it rolled out of the DSR shop a couple of months ago. But it goes nice and fast.
"We emptied every piece of scrap metal out of the cabinets that we could and bolted it on the front of the car to keep it on the track. We're heavy. But the car is very drivable and we can tune around that.
"I don't know if you have to throw everything out that we learned at the night sessions once we go into race day in the heat of the sun but we figured it out last year OK."
Teams will face conditions unlike what they experienced in qualifying. Sunday begins with Top Fuel at 11 a.m. (MT) followed by Funny Car. The forecast is for cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-80s.
The Mopar Mile-High Nationals is the 14th of 24 events in the Mello Yello Series and first stop on the three-race, three-week Western Swing that heads to Sonoma, Calif., near San Francisco, next weekend and concludes near Seattle.
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