Brown drives to second round
<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/a_brown_358939.jpg" alt="a_brown_358939" align="right"borders="0"/>
Richmond, VA (10-12-08) Antron Brown raced his David Powers-owned Matco Tools dragster to a second round finish Sunday afternoon at Virginia Motorsports Park. The Matco Tools driver remains third in the NHRA Countdown to 1 standings.
Brown qualified his Matco Tools rail eighth with an elapsed time of 3.823-seconds on Friday afternoon at Virginia Motorsports Park. It is the second time he has started eighth this season. He defeated 17-time Top Fuel winner Brandon Bernstein before falling to five-time series champion Tony Schumacher in round two.
As the first pair of dragsters to do battle at the third annual Virginia NHRA Nationals, Brown used a tune-up from crew chief Lee Beard to score the wire-to-wire victory in the Matco-backed rail. The first-year Top Fuel standout used a .065 of-a-second reaction time and a pass of 3.803 seconds at 314.90 mph to knock off the perennial title contender. Bernstein posted a lap of 3.832 at 312.93 in his bright red dragster. Brown is now 2-2 against Bernstein this season.
Squaring off against Schumacher for the seventh time this season, Brown got the slight starting line advantage and powered the bright blue Matco Tools dragster to a performance of 3.847 at 300.20, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the quickest lap of the round. The Alan Johnson-tuned dragster posted a lap of 3.779 at 318.54, the fastest 1,000-foot speed since the distance change in July. Brown, who defeated Schumacher in the final round at the Atlanta race in April, is now 1-6 against the U.S. Army car this season.
“That Matco car ran great this weekend, we just always seem to come up a little bit short against those guys,” Brown said. “If we had run them in the first round, we’d have won. It’s one of those luck of the draw deals. We’re still third and have a great shot and finishing second and that’s our plan. We’re going to work hard to finish strong at (Las) Vegas and Pomona (Calif.).”
<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/a_brown_358939.jpg" alt="a_brown_358939" align="right"borders="0"/>
Richmond, VA (10-12-08) Antron Brown raced his David Powers-owned Matco Tools dragster to a second round finish Sunday afternoon at Virginia Motorsports Park. The Matco Tools driver remains third in the NHRA Countdown to 1 standings.
Brown qualified his Matco Tools rail eighth with an elapsed time of 3.823-seconds on Friday afternoon at Virginia Motorsports Park. It is the second time he has started eighth this season. He defeated 17-time Top Fuel winner Brandon Bernstein before falling to five-time series champion Tony Schumacher in round two.
As the first pair of dragsters to do battle at the third annual Virginia NHRA Nationals, Brown used a tune-up from crew chief Lee Beard to score the wire-to-wire victory in the Matco-backed rail. The first-year Top Fuel standout used a .065 of-a-second reaction time and a pass of 3.803 seconds at 314.90 mph to knock off the perennial title contender. Bernstein posted a lap of 3.832 at 312.93 in his bright red dragster. Brown is now 2-2 against Bernstein this season.
Squaring off against Schumacher for the seventh time this season, Brown got the slight starting line advantage and powered the bright blue Matco Tools dragster to a performance of 3.847 at 300.20, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the quickest lap of the round. The Alan Johnson-tuned dragster posted a lap of 3.779 at 318.54, the fastest 1,000-foot speed since the distance change in July. Brown, who defeated Schumacher in the final round at the Atlanta race in April, is now 1-6 against the U.S. Army car this season.
“That Matco car ran great this weekend, we just always seem to come up a little bit short against those guys,” Brown said. “If we had run them in the first round, we’d have won. It’s one of those luck of the draw deals. We’re still third and have a great shot and finishing second and that’s our plan. We’re going to work hard to finish strong at (Las) Vegas and Pomona (Calif.).”
