Tony Pedregon is a former NHRA Funny Car driver, FOX TV commentator, painter, and one-time boxer – and maybe a wise advisor to Top Fuel’s Antron Brown.

Pedregon borrowed from a concept reminiscent of martial artist and pop-culture icon Bruce Lee when he shared some inspiration. Brown listened, and it has paid off with a second straight and third overall Mello Yello Drag Racing Series championship.

After Brown clinched the honor for the Matco Tools / Toyota / U.S. Army team and Don Schumacher Racing Sunday during eliminations at the Toyota Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, he said Pedregon had told him, “You’ve got to flow like water, like Bruce Lee.”  

If Muhammad Ali could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, Antron Brown can flow like water.

Brown translated, “What that means is you can’t be up on the high wave, and you can’t be on the low wave. You’ve got to just flow like water that’s steady and streaming all the way down. And when you do that, you let everything else take care of itself. And we learned that from 2012.

“We came in here with a big points lead and there were things that bit us that never bit us,” he said. “Like, who thinks a control module box would [fail] on us in the first round? [Khalid al] Balooshi goes by and beats us. Then first round at Pomona [against Spencer Massey] I was halfway down the track – he was nowhere near me – and our fuel line just broke, came apart. Caught my hands on fire, stopped on the track, parachutes came out, and he comes around me on the big end. Who ever plans that?! Then we won the championship by eight points.

“That’s what taught us something,” Brown said. “We were thinking, ‘We’re so close to the championship.’ ” Now he corrects himself: “Don’t think about that. Flow like that water does. Just flow steady. Do the same things each and every round that got you there. Get as far as you can get – get everything you can get from that race. Then erase that and move on to the next.”

That, he said, “is what our strategy has been in the Countdown for the whole time since 2012: Just flow like water. And it’s been working well for us.”

It certainly has been working, with three series titles for Brown in five years. In that stretch, he and the Brian Corradi- / Mark Oswald-led team have earned 30 victories in 47 final rounds. Brown has won about 40 percent of his elimination rounds in 118 events and 45 Top Fuel wins in 211 starts.

He lost his semifinal match-up Sunday to Kalitta Motorsports’ JR Todd, but his numbers still stun.

Since Brown switched from the Pro Stock Motorcycle class to Top Fuel in 2008, no nitro-class driver has won more event titles. Brown already has matched career-bests for victories (seven) and final rounds (11). During that stretch, he has earned more Wally trophies than the next two Top Fuel racers combined: Tony Schumacher has 15 and Shawn Langdon 14. Brown has averaged six Top Fuel victories a season. Only one other racer has earned as many in any one year – he won seven in his 2013 championship season.

What makes it all worthwhile, Brown said, is that “a round-win is like an event-win. It’s harder every year to win championships. It’s harder every year to make the Top 10.We’r winning by [the width] of a spill plate on the front wing. We’re going 330 miles an hour and winning by inches. That’s the way the sport has evolved.”

Brown, too, has evolved. He has evolved from a child playing at the drag races at Englishtown and Atco in New Jersey to a 16-time Pro Stock Motorcycle winner to a Top Fuel racer who qualified No. 1 at his first event in a dragster and never has let his foot off the gas pedal.

He’s relentless, attentive to detail, appreciative of the colleagues surrounding him and the blessings of success, whether it’s defined by the perfect organization, sponsors, team, crew chiefs, circumstances, or family.

That’s just how he flows.

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