BROWN HITS TOP FUEL JACKPOT AT TRICKY DENVER TRACK
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Antron Brown won the Top Fuel trophy at Las Vegas earlier this year, but he had no idea whether that same luck would follow him to the high-altitude NHRA Mopar Mile-High Nationals at Denver. He knew Thunder Mountain and Bandimere Speedway at Morrison, Colo., involved as much gambling as the Nevada desert oasis.
“You go to Denver like you’re playing craps, he said. “You just roll those dice and hope they come out right so you stumble onto a good combination that’s going to work.”
Ka-ching!
Brown hit the jackpot Sunday for the first time in six races, defeating gritty final-round opponent and No. 1 qualifier Leah Pritchett to kick off the energy-sapping Western Swing.
He won with a 3.792-second elapsed time (his best of race day) at 319.82-mph on the 1,000-foot course, holding off her relentless 3.816, 324.90 in the Papa John’s Pizza Dragster. The former Pro Stock Motorcycle multi-time winner claimed his 48th Top Fuel trophy by about a mere 17-foot margin (0.0363 seconds).
The Matco Tools/Toyota/U.S. Army Dragster earned his third victory in seven finals this year, his 64th career victory, and his third at Thunder Mountain. (He won at Denver in 2009 on his way to a Western Swing sweep and again in 2012, during his first of three Top Fuel championship seasons.)
The victory was the 50th for co-crew chief Brian Corradi, who also netted his first triumph as a tuner at this Denver racetrack.
Brown denied Pritchett her fourth victory this season and fifth in all as she tried to reclaim the points lead from second-round finisher Steve Torrence. Brown moved into second place, 16 points ahead of No. 3 Pritchett and 54 off Torrence’s pace as the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series’ Western Swing heads back to California this weekend for the Toyota Sonoma Nationals.
Pritchett reached the final by defeating Troy Coughlin Jr., Clay Millican, and Tony Schumacher on her way to her fifth final round this season and seventh overall.
Also winning Sunday were Robert Hight (Funny Car), Drew Skillman (Pro Stock), and Eddie Krawiec (Pro Stock Motorcycle).
Brown beat Scott Palmer, Doug Kalitta, and Brittany Force to make his third final-round appearance in five races and seventh overall this year.
Brown, who qualified seventh, began with a narrow victory over No. 10 starter Scott Palmer. Brown won in 3.837 seconds at 321.27 mph to Palmer’s 3.861, 318.02 mph. His second-round matchup against Doug Kalitta required both driver and car to be spot-on, and he prevailed (3.796, 315.34 to Kalitta’s 3.814, 324.75).
After the second round, the crew changed rear end, which was a new experience for several crew members. Brown said, “the belt came off, tore up some cables, tore up the whole ignition system. We changed four different things on the car, and we got back up for that [semifinal] round just by the skin of our teeth. But that’s what a championship-caliber team does. I’ve been blessed with a great, great team.”
The semifinal run against Force put the team to the test again, for they had to change the block and fix a cracked crankshaft before they could march to the starting line for the finals. In that semifinal, Brown used a 3.797-second, 317.72-mph effort against the tire-smoking to take his shot at Don Schumacher Racing colleague Pritchett. Brown entered eliminations trailing her by only four points in the standings.
“We started off with our heads down and, Lord knows, we worked so hard and, when we get these deals like this where they’re going to beat us up, we just keep working hard at it. A winner never quits,” Brown said. “And that’s the motto we went by this weekend because this mountain will beat you up and tear you down. But our Matco Tools/U.S. Army/Toyota Dragster, we were going places today.
“We just kept our head down and kept on moving forward and it was the most incredible thing. The coolest part is we went through some tough, tough, tough competition,” he said.
“Scott Palmer could have taken out a lot of people in the first round, but we got around him. Against Doug Kalitta – “’The Quiet Assassin,’ we call him – it was incredible how the whole team stepped up. And we had an incredible opponent (Brittany Force) in the semis, and we had to keep our head down because it could’ve gone either way. Then we raced our teammate Leah in the final, and it was a slugfest,” he said.
“It just felt good to go out there and run .79s [3.79-second E.T.s] all day long, and that’s what it took to get it done. This definitely builds morale, and all we do is just build off this momentum,” Brown said. “We know Sonoma is another good racetrack we love to be at. But this, right here, was the toughest by far, and it just gets us closer to that end result we’re trying for. These don’t come often, so we’re going to enjoy it.”
Brown won at Las Vegas and Topeka this spring. Sunday’s victory was his first in six races as he was unable to counter Steve Torrence as the Texan blazed a swath through the competition to the points lead.
"No doubt, we're having a good season but there's a lot more racing left to do and we just want to continue to get better every weekend,” Brown said.
Sonoma is Stage 2 in the Western Swing, which Brown swept in 2009. He had no delusions that he has any guarantee of repeating that feat of eight years ago.
“It’s tough. The conditions and the changes that these crew chiefs have to make in three weeks is what makes it so difficult [on the Western Swing],” he said. “[Co-crew chiefs] Brian [Corradi] and Mark [Oswald] are the best of the best and we’ve done it before and we’d love to do it again. It’s getting tougher every year to win one race, let alone three in a row.”
Recognizing that he has raced in seven finals this year and won just three times, Brown said, “The competition is just incredible. Just wait until the Countdown playoff starts after the U.S. Nationals on Labor Day. No doubt we’re having a good season, but there’s a lot more racing left to do, and we just want to continue to get better every weekend. We have to keep pushing, keep getting faster and remain consistent. That’s what it’ll take.”
He knew what it took at Denver.
Even before the event began, Brown said, “We change almost everything on the car before we go to Denver, because Denver is just a way different setup with how we run the car. We put stuff that we’ve been running off to the side, then we’ll swap it back after Denver. That had been our Achilles heel for a stretch before we made it to the finals last year, because Denver had been eating us up a little bit. We’ve won [at Denver] twice and been runner-up five times. We just have to get back to that combination and be competitive. Denver’s just a challenging track.”
Figure it out the Matco Tools/Toyota/U.S. Army team did. Sonoma is the next mountain, figuratively, never mind the entire three-races-in-three-weekends grind.
"It's getting tougher every year to win one race, let alone three in a row," he said.