Antron Brown was giving a speech at the Matco Tools hospitality tent Saturday, and one NHRA New England Nationals fan shouted out to him, “If it rains, I ain’t going to be able to come back tomorrow.”

The Top Fuel driver responded with some advice: “Look – we only come up here once a year. Work will be there Tuesday. Come on back. Work ain’t goin’ nowhere. Enjoy yourself. Remember – you don’t live to work; you work to live.”

It rained, so much so that eliminations for this ninth of 24 Mello Yello Drag Racing Series events were pushed back to Monday.  

Amazingly, the grandstands were at least three times fuller than anyone would have expected. And one man made a point to get Brown’s attention Monday. He told the Top Fuel winner, “I took your advice yesterday! I called out! I told ‘em I wasn’t going to be there [at work]! I said, ‘Work will be there on Tuesday!”

Brown grinned and said, “Good man!” He added, “I don’t mind working on Mondays, because I love what I do.”

And what was Brown not to love about Monday at New England Dragway?

He defeated Steve Torrence in a final round that featured the top two qualifiers, recording his second victory this year in four final-round appearances through nine races. He ran a 3.769-second elapsed time at 314.61 mph on the 1,000-foot course to Torrence’s 3.778, 325.30.

This 56th overall triumph was the 31st for Brown in five-plus seasons. That’s two more than the next two combined during that stretch.

Coupled with Ron Capps’ Funny Car victory minutes before his own achievement, Brown completed a 52nd Don Schumacher Racing nitro sweep. It marked the first time in the past 12 events that DSR eared victories in both nitro classes at the same race.

The Matco Tools/ Toyota  U.S. Army Dragster driver entered the event second in the standings, 96 points behind leader Doug Kalitta, and sliced that margin by more than half. Brown heads this weekend to his home track at Englishtown, N.J., just 46 points off the pace.

"It feels good," Brown said. "We've been to a couple of other finals this year that we feel like we should've won. This was a great race weekend. We're still learning some [different] things on the car and we are growing on it. The car is showing us great signs of being a phenomenal race car.”

Brown said crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald and the crew “are putting out work, and we’re reaping the benefits. We had a couple of rounds today that went our way, and it felt good to have that on our side – and it felt good to be able to capitalize on that in the final round. We had a really, really tough race against Steve Torrence and that Capco team.”

Brown and the NHRA Mello Yello Series will travel to near his hometown this week for the 47th annual NHRA Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey. The Matco Tools team sits second in Top Fuel points standings.

"It feels really good to get one at this race up here in Epping. This is a race that we haven't won and it feels good to bring that Wally home from New England., especially being here on the East Coast, only growing up about three and a half hours from here," the Burlington, N.J., native said.

"It feels really good knowing that when you work hard, sometimes it goes your way but this weekend, we were still able to end up in that winners circle, which is great," Brown said.

"You don't get ‘more confident.’ You’ve just got a little more momentum,” he said.

“NHRA racing is a sport of chance, where you have to have some luck go your way. You can set yourself up for luck by the way you qualify. You’ve just got to take it while you can get it, because it ain’t always going to come. This sport is the most humbling sport. We tell everybody that all the time. I can be a hero this thousandth of a second. And next weekend, I can be a zero at a thousandth of a second. We just give it all we’ve got every weekend, and when it’s your turn, the chips will fall your way. And this weekend was definitely a great weekend for our team.

“Our DSR cars had a real good shot,” Brown said. “We’ve just got to qualify a little bit different so we don’t see each other in the earlier rounds.”

After a first-round bye because the grid was short on a full field of cars, Brown eliminated stablemates Shawn Langdon and Tony Schumacher.    

“We’ve been going a lot of rounds these last four or five races. We're starting to get in that groove,” Brown said. “This weekend was definitely a great weekend for our team."

Torrence scored an easy pass to the semifinals, gaining a bye when first-round opponent Smax Smith was unable to drive his Leverich Racing Dragster, then used a scheduled bye run.

However, Torrence said after the race, “Our luck just ran out in the finals against Antron. But it was a great overall weekend, despite a lot of crazy twists with the rain and the way the ladder worked out. We’ve got great momentum going to Englishtown, where we’ve won before.”

Until Monday, Torrence had not won a single elimination round at Epping. So he has made strides in his program.

“This is the best car and the best team I’ve had,” he said.  “That gives you an awful lot of confidence going to the line, and I think that’s reflected in the season. We’ve qualified No. 1 four times, been to three finals, and won [the season-opener at] Pomona.”

Next up on the schedule is the Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, the second of four stops in consecutive weeks in the so-called “Eastern Swing.”

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