Multi-time NHRA Top Fuel champion Antron Brown has a fondness for ducks. They remind him a lot of himself.

Well, to be exact, January 2008 were his most duckish moments.

Brown transitioned from Pro Stock Motorcycle racer to Top Fuel driver in pretty much the same fashion as a duck takes to water.

"I think just being a fan of it because I used to live, eat, and sleep and look at fuel cars since I was a little kid," Brown explained. "I think it's all those dreams of me sitting there with my eyes closed, thinking I was driving before I was even driving one. I think that's how... It's like a duck to water. They envision themselves being on top of that water, floating and swimming, and once they get to do it, they just do it. That was my whole mindset when I got in the Top Fuel car. I just did it."

Brown made being a rookie fuel driver look so effortless. This is just the way he presented it, above the water. Below the water was another story.

"I looked calm on the outside, but my heartbeat was beating a thousand minutes per second," Brown admitted. "But the thing about it was - I was never scared to do it, but you're always nervous because you don't know what to expect. When you have something that's going to go 330 miles an hour plus, and they accelerate that hard, you just don't know what to expect. So for me, I was just like, 'Man!"

"But once I got to do it, then I knew I found a home. That was the home I'd been longing for."

 

 

One would think transitioning from two wheels to four would be simple. Brown had driven them all, but a nitro car, nothing compares. He went to the Frank Hawley Drag Racing School to help make the transition a seamless one.

"I grew up on two wheels, motorcycles and stuff like that," Brown said. "I will never forget that when I went to Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School and did the alcohol dragster school. I went there, and I've never driven a dragster, period. I drove a motorcycle. I got in that dragster and I'll never forget; it was so funny when I shifted the gears really fast one time because I was used to shifting the Pro Stock bike. With a Suzuki, you got to be on it, like, really quick. Like you react to the tree, you react to the shift light."

Hawley, drag racing's most iconic nitro teacher, looked at his student as if he'd cut corners on the way to concluding an answer.

"Frank looked at me and goes, 'Ain't no way you hit that shifter that quick. You're like 2-300 RPM quicker than anybody that ever's been in this car," Brown recalled. "He goes, 'You do it again. I want to see if you do it again."

Hawley had seen his fair share of drivers, but this two-wheeled expert had just taken four wheels to another level of rookie expertise.

"Sure enough, I did it again," Brown said. "He goes, 'You're on time."

 

 

The rookie looked at the two-time world championship-winning teacher with a response completely accurate to his character as a 16-time winner on two wheels.

"Friend, it's the only way I know how to be," Brown said.

Hawley quickly surmised Brown was like very few students he'd ever instructed.

"He looked at me and goes, 'You amazed me on how eager you are to learn and how you listen, and you initiated everything that I told you because that's what I wanted to do," Brown said. "Every time he told me I already did like a hundred laps down the racetrack of what he told me to do before I sat in the car, and I did it.

"He goes, 'I saw you sitting in class several times with your eyes closed." "

I said, 'I wasn't sleeping, Frank. I was thinking of going down the track; I was already making runs."

"I kind of do that a lot," Brown continued. "Anything I do in life, I envision myself doing it before I do it."

The experience was like a scene out of the Karate Kid, except this time, Daniel-San had performed the wax-on, wax-off procedure in his head hundreds of times in advance.

"Frank is like Mr. Miyagi, though," Brown said. "That's a Miyagi-Do of drag racing, right there is old Frank Hawley, and he probably looked at me and goes, 'That's pretty impressive."

"Now I hear him saying some of that stuff in the speeches."

Once Brown left Hawley's school of higher learning, he teamed up with then Matco Tools Top Fuel dragster crew chief Lee Beard in their first test session. Brown understood an alcohol dragster and a fuel-burning dragster are two separate entities.

"Lee is not a man of many words. He's a very good coach," Brown explained. "He's able to break it down and tell you how to do it and how he'd want you to do it. This guy goes out and does it. Well, for me, when I went in there, nobody can ever tell you when a car drives a hole or if the car doesn't feel right, shut off.

"But I just know mechanically because I worked on it for so many years and did some different things on different vehicles. When it's not right, shut off. Because all you are going to do is tear stuff up. So for me, when I went out there, I felt the car drop a hole and pinched down. I let off, and Lee goes, 'You felt that? I have drivers that drive this thing for years now that keep the pedal down."

Beard provided Brown with the opportunity to showcase what he had learned with no further instruction beyond the basics. This prompted a conversation between Beard and Hawley afterward.

"Frank goes, 'Antron, Lee Beard called me and gave you the best compliment. He goes, Man, Frank, what you teach this kid?" Brown recalled his conversation with Hawley. "Beard said, 'If I didn't know that he wasn't a rookie, I'd swear that he drove a car for ten years. When Anton got in his car, he was like a duck to water. He just started swimming, brother."

"Then that's how my whole career jumped off was just me being prepared for when that opportunity came, and I wasn't going to let it slip by."

Let this sink in. Brown only had 16 runs under his belt when he made his driving debut at the 2009 NHRA Winternationals and scored both the No.. 1 qualifying position with a 4.495, 330.07 [quarter-mile] and reached the semi-finals.

"I'll never forget we went to the first race in Pomona, and lo and behold, we qualified number one," Brown said. "We lost in the semis there, and the rest was like handwriting on the wall. I'll never forget our fourth race in, we went to Houston, Texas, where David Power's hometown track is, and we qualified up there in the top four, and we won. It was our first win and I think Lee and Top Fuel the years before they made it to the final and made it to the semis, but they hadn't won yet."

Fourteen years later, Brown's stats speak for themselves. He's competed in 337 national events, and of those events, he's won 55 of them. Brown has reached 97 career Top Fuel finals. Since qualifying No. 1 in his first event, Brown has added 37 more No. 1 qualifiers.

Call it all beginners luck, but those who know understand it was a natural just doing the things a natural does. It's kind of like a duck taking to water. It's a natural fit.

Antron Brown was and is a natural fit.