SWEEPIN' ANTRON STYLE
With just three races remaining until the Countdown to One, Brown has five national event wins, leads the point standings 1,283 to 1,084 over Tony Schumacher, last year's champion and has clinched a spot in the Countdown to One.
Those numbers were good enough for Ashley to rearrange his schedule to be in attendance at Infineon Raceway and watch his driver become just the seventh in history to sweep the Western Swing. Seven months ago, Antron Brown told his new car owner, Mike Ashley, he could win eight races and
contend for a
championship. Ashley responded by telling Brown to do get the job done
– one round at a time.
With just three races remaining until the Countdown to One, Brown has
five national event wins, leads the point standings 1,283 to 1,084 over
Tony Schumacher, last year's champion and has clinched a spot in the
Countdown to One.
Those numbers were good enough for Ashley to rearrange his schedule to
be in attendance at Infineon Raceway and watch his driver become just
the seventh in history to sweep the Western Swing.
“This just doesn’t seem real,” Brown admitted. “Just from all the
turmoil we experienced with the team changing ownership and with Mike
Ashley coming in, he’s been an excellent team owner.
“You go through ups and down and lose parts of the team you are
comfortable with and then you don’t know who they are going to be
replaced with, but when a guy like Mike Ashley tells you it is going to
be okay you follow his lead.”
Ashley’s lead took Brown into a pair of seasoned Funny Car tuners,
Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald, both of which he’d worked with at Don
Schumacher Racing while racing his bike.
He remained in the shadows of a media-hyped Tony Schumacher and Larry Dixon rivalry just waiting for his opportunity to strike.
“We kept our heads down and remained focused,” Brown said. “We kept
digging and our goal was to come out and be just as competitive as we
were last season.”
THIS AIN'T NO SQUARE DANCE – It's call the Western Swing – a
three race stretch which starts in Denver, goes northwest to Seattle
and then finishes up in Sonoma, California. It is a meal of turf, surf
and wine to be savored by Antron Brown, driver of the Matco Tools
dragster owned by Mike Ashley. Brown completed the sweep of the three
events with an exciting win over Cory McClanathan in the FRAM Autolite
Nationals at Infineon Raceway.
Brown was quickest off the line, .067 to .088, and fastest down the
track, 3.990 to 4.002, against a determined Cory McClanathan, who was
gunning to win for his sponsor, FRAM.
Brown's march to victory including a first round win over Troy Buff, a
second round win over Joe Hartley and a semi-final win over the number
one qualifier, J.R. Todd.
“I am thinking a lot of sweeping,” Brown said with a laugh, after
having avoided all talk of the Western Swing since Denver. “We are just
going to keep on going to see where we can go and right now it is as
high as the sky.”
“The Western Swing is important. I'm still waiting for the bonus money
NHRA is going to give up for doing it. It's just great being a part of
history. I don't care what race it is, any racer will tell they'd love
to win any three races in a row. The thing is we just went into every
race and I blocked it out of my mind. Everybody wanted to hype it up
and I went to every race like it was any other race. I just tried to
win every round we were in.”
THE WESTERN SWINGERS – In the past 19 years only seven drivers
have won what is known as “The Western Swing”. Joe Amato, driving a
dragster, was the first to sweep the Denver, Seattle, Sonoma trio of
races, doing it in 1991. John Force did the deed in '94 in his Funny
Car, followed by Cory McClanathat in a dragster in '97, Larry Dixon in
a dragster in '03, Greg Anderson in Pro Stock in '04, Tony Schumacher
in his Army dragster in '08 and now Antron Brown, in his dragster.
Force and Anderson are the only drivers outside of the dragster ranks to turn the trick.
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