Aboard the Matco Tools Toyota Top Fuel dragster, Antron Brown powered to the winner’s circle for the third time in 2024 when he defeated motorsports legend Tony Stewart in the final round of the DENSO NHRA Sonoma Nationals. Brown clocked a winning 3.746 E.T. at 329.67 mph to claim his fifth Sonoma Raceway trophy and 77th overall on Sunday afternoon.
Brown’s weekend in wine country began with an impressive qualifying outing, which saw his Brian Corradi/Mark Oswald-led team go four-for-four with consistent full pulls. He opened the weekend with a solid 3.765-second pass to place him fourth leading into Friday night’s session under the Sonoma Raceway lights. He stepped up to a 3.688 E.T. in round two and improved upon that even further when he recorded a 3.685 E.T. at 336.40 mph during Saturday’s first session. Brown then closed out qualifying by taking his AB Motorsports Matco rail straight down the groove with the quickest pass of the session, a 3.719 at 333.66 mph, to earn three bonus points. Following four good runs, Brown settled into the No. 7 position on the Top Fuel ladder and brought that same consistency with him into Sunday’s elimination rounds.
The third-year team owner and driver started race day with a first-round matchup versus his technical alliance teammate Shawn Reed. Brown scored a slight starting line advantage and never trailed for the win, crossing the finish line in 3.728 seconds to advance while Reed lost traction early into the run. Round two found Brown squaring off with his Toyota teammate Steve Torrence, a battle that featured seven world titles between the two former champions. Against Torrence, it was Brown’s quick reflexes that helped him to capture the win as both drivers clocked identical 3.747 E.T.s. Brown’s holeshot advantage allowed him to propel through the beams ahead of Torrence by eight-thousandths-of-a-second to set up a semifinal contest against another multi-time world champion, Brittany Force. For the third round in a row, Brown left first and took his Matco Tools dragster straight down the groove in 3.732 seconds to clinch lane choice over Stewart in the final round while Force went up in smoke as soon as she stood on the gas. Brown and Stewart treated Sonoma fans to an exciting side-by-side race with the two drivers charging hard down the 1,000-foot stretch. Brown reached the finish line with an approximate 10-foot lead over Stewart whose 3.774-second attempt wasn’t enough to outpace Brown’s 3.746 E.T.
“To get three wins this season is a true testament to our team because this class is the toughest it’s ever, ever been,” said Brown, who tied reigning world champ Doug Kalitta for the winningest Top Fuel driver at Sonoma Raceway on Sunday. “What really gave us confidence this weekend is on Q4 on Saturday when the track got hot like it was today, and no one else made it down the track, we went out and ran that 3.71 and got those brownie points by running low of the round, that really helped us out a lot, and we just never stopped. We knew that at any given moment this weekend we could step up to the plate and run with any of the cars out here, and the door was left wide open when Doug Kalitta (was eliminated) in the first round. Seeing that made us pump the brakes a little bit, and we saw Langdon have a little tire smoke too, but then we saw Billy Torrence run that 3.66, and we knew we had to shoot for it because we were up against Shawn Reed and they’re a team that knows everything we got. We just had to do what we know how to do, and that’s race the race track, and it was just game on from there.
“I’ve always had a great deal of respect for Tony Stewart,” Brown said of lining up next to the NHRA rookie in his first final-round appearance. “He’s one of my heroes in NASCAR and IndyCar. He’s going to be in the winner’s circle soon, trust me. And he’s not going to do it one time; he’s going to do it multiple times. It was a monumental matchup in that final round. He got me first round at one of these races where we smoked the tires and he beat us, and it felt good to get one back on him today, for sure.”
Brown began the race weekend ranked fifth in the NHRA Mission Foods Top Fuel point standings and while he did not move up in the standings, he successfully narrowed the points margin and is now within striking distance of the three drivers ranked ahead of him as the NHRA’s regular season begins to wind down with only two races left before starting positions for the Countdown to the Championship are locked in. When qualifying kicks off for the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd, Minnesota on August 15, Brown will begin the weekend with only a one-point deficit separating him from No. 4 ranked Justin Ashley. He is nine points behind No. 3 Steve Torrence, and 34 points – or less than two round wins – from No. 2 Shawn Langdon.
“Our main focus right now is to get ourselves in the top three to start the Countdown to the Championship, and we’ve got two races left to get it done. That’s our goal and this race here definitely was a step in the right direction. This is the time of year when you have to get on and start peaking because if you don’t have it together by this point in the season, that Countdown is going to be really, really rough. And that’s what we came here to do. No more testing, no more tuning; we’re here to start polishing our race package and make sure it’s on point.”
The AB Motorsports team will head back to Brownsburg, Indiana to regroup and prepare for the upcoming Night Under Fire match race in Norwalk, Ohio, August 3, before heading west to Brainerd for the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals where they will continue their quest for their first series title as an organization, and Brown’s fourth overall.
This story was originally published on July 29, 2024. 
