With a runaway Top Fuel victory Sunday over tire-smoking Tony Schumacher at the Keystone Nationals near Reading, Pa., Anton Brown became the only NHRA racer to win the first three events of the Countdown to the Championship.

And he opened up a 94-point advantage over second-ranked Schumacher – who himself has a 100-point margin over No. 3 Brittany Force – as the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series action shifts to Ennis, Texas, near Dallas, for the fourth of six playoff events.

Brown joined fellow seven-time winner Jack Beckman, from the Funny Car class, in the winners circle to celebrate Don Schumacher Racing’s double-victory that raised its total number of event titles to 266. This feat marked a record seventh time this season DSR has swept nitro titles at the same event. It also is the third time through 21 events at which Brown and Beckman have shared the post-race stage. They shared the accomplishment with Pro Stock winner Chris McGaha and Pro Stock Motorcyle winner Andrew Hines.

“This day was just a true blessing,” Brown said after his triumphant 3.717-second elapsed time at 328.46 mph on the Maple Grove Raceway 1,000-foot course where he never before had won in either his Top Fuel or Pro Stock Motorcycle career in 18 tries.

“The thing I’m blessed to have on my side is [crew chiefs] Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald with this entire Matco Tools/U.S. Army team. To go out there and do what we did today and go down that track with no runs on it, was a monumental statement,” Brown said.

“We didn’t get real greedy. We just kept running what we thought the track would hold. We just raced the track, not the other competitors, and we were fortunate enough to come out with a win. The goal is to keep winning rounds,” said the driver of the Matco Tools-branded “Tools For the Cause” Dragster.

“That U.S. Army team with (crew chief) Mike Green, Neal [assistant crew chief Strausbaugh] and Tony are no joke. They go rounds. They made it to the final round again, and we were able to get by them for the win. And that was huge for us,” he said.

Reigning series champion Schumacher knows if he’s going to earn a ninth title, he’s going to have to figure out how to stop Brown, who has defeated him 10 consecutive times in Countdown match-ups.

“There are no two ways around it – those guys are running really well right now,” Schumacher said.

He knows how critical that momentum can be. In last year’s Countdown, he dominated with back-to-back victories at Charlotte and Dallas [both of which finished at the Texas Motorplex] en route to his eighth championship.

“It’s still going to be a battle to the bitter end,” Schumacher said. “Last year, we won a couple of races to start off the Countdown and then we smoked the tires a few times and opened the door. The game’s not over yet. It’s still a lot of fun, and there’s still a lot of racing left.

“We did well here this weekend, for the most part,” Schumacher said of the paranormal conditions at Reading. “The U.S. Army car was a good car here this weekend. The right lane was a little tougher for us there in the final. The sun was out – I don’t know, we’ll have to go back and look at it. But the car’s fine as we move forward. That final run, the car didn’t even move forward. It jumped straight up. I never even pedaled it, because he was on such a great run. So game over for today.

“What is it, 94 points right now? We’ve come back from further than that,” Schumacher said. “They just have to make some mistakes. If they keep winning races, then it doesn’t matter, we’ll just keep fighting for No. 2.

“We blew it up hard in the first round today. We destroyed some stuff, and the guys worked so hard to get us back on track and then we beat some great cars. Then, losing lane choice didn’t help us in that final, though. I wish we could go back and maybe stage a little thinner in that semifinal and get that lane choice back. But, who knows? Antron ran a 71 (3.714 seconds) in that right lane in his semifinal, anyway. They’re just running well right now.”

By notching his 12th round-win in this year’s Countdown, Brown already has topped the 11 total rounds he won in his 2012 championship season. (JR Todd owns the record for consecutive round-wins to start the playoffs. He set that in 2007.)

Brown claimed the 54th total victory, 38th in a dragster. It was his personal-best seventh victory in 2015. He has won six races in a season five times.

He fought his way from the No. 12 starting position (for which he can thank stubborn rain that stingily subsided long enough for only one qualifying session all weekend). He beat Clay Millican, Dom Lagana, and Larry Dixon to reach the final.

Schumacher eliminated JR Todd, Richie Crampton, and Brittany Force on his way to a bid for a sixth Maple Grove victory. Schumacher is the most successful Top Fuel driver in this event’s 31-year history.

But Sunday, in this return to the region where he grew up, at nearby Chesterfield, N.J., Brown was fulfilling a mission. When he won in June at his hometown track at Englishtown, N.J., Brown said he wanted to make NHRA history. He did that Sunday, but he has a few more miles to march before he is poised to make the history he had in mind.

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