The disappointment of his first, first round loss of the season, to Spencer Massey in the U.S. Nationals will never be far from Antron Brown's memory, but now, with six races remaining, the focus for the driver of the Matco Tools dragster owned by Mike Ashley is the championship trophy waiting for someone in Pomona.

Brown, seeded first in the Countdown to 1, has the tightest grip on the trophy. This weekend, in Charlotte, the battle begins and for Brown, what better place to start.

"I'm just excited and geared up for the new challenge,” Brown said. “I can't wait to get to Charlotte to get back to racing at Bruton's (Smith) awesome track at zMax Dragway. Indy knocked our team back to reality a little bit on how tough this Top Fuel class really is. We have to race our own lane and do what we do. We're not going to worry about who we're racing and being conservative. We're going to race all out from this point forward." The disappointment of his first, first round loss of the season, to Spencer Massey in the U.S. Nationals will never be far from Antron Brown's memory, but now, with six races remaining, the focus for the driver of the Matco Tools dragster owned by Mike Ashley is the championship trophy waiting for someone in Pomona.

Brown, seeded first in the Countdown to 1, has the tightest grip on the trophy. This weekend, in Charlotte, the battle begins and for Brown, what better place to start.

"I'm just excited and geared up for the new challenge,” Brown said. “I can't wait to get to Charlotte to get back to racing at Bruton's (Smith) awesome track at zMax Dragway. Indy knocked our team back to reality a little bit on how tough this Top Fuel class really is. We have to race our own lane and do what we do. We're not going to worry about who we're racing and being conservative. We're going to race all out from this point forward."

Performance in eliminations will be critical, however, with the new qualifying points available to the fastest in each qualifying round, drivers are looking at the possibility of gathering up as many as 12 additional points that were never before available.

"Every run counts now for points,” said Brian Corradi, one half of the crew chief tandem on the Matco Tools dragster.  We're going to do our best to be the quickest car of each session. This new points system that NHRA has installed really changes things. You can't test now on Saturday if you make a good run on Friday night. We have to have our game face on and try to make every run down the track. It's time to put up. This is survival of the fittest in the Countdown (to 1)."

There are also points to be made by being the quickest down the lane. When the NHRA decided to recognize 1000 foot records, it meant teams can now set new National records and the baseline for the record just happens to be belong to one of Brown's toughest competitors – Tony Schumacher.  

The NHRA has established Schumacher's 3.771 second laps made in October 2008 at Virginia Motorsports Park in Dinwiddie, Va., as the mark to beat. Schumacher's 318.92 mph pass  at Las Vegas in November of 2008 is the speed mark to beat. However, drivers can only collect a 20 point bonus by beating the elapsed time mark and then backing it up within one percent. The world record can only be broken once per event.

Last year, in this same event, Brown, in his rookie season, was the third fastest qualifier overall and lost to Schumacher in the final round.

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