After scoring the pole position aboard his AB Motorsports Matco Tools dragster at the second annual SCAG Power Equipment PRO Superstar Shootout on Friday evening, reigning NHRA Top Fuel world champion Antron Brown was looking to keep the momentum rolling into race day. Brown drew his technical alliance teammate Shawn Reed as his first opponent for Saturday’s elimination rounds at Bradenton Motorsports Park via the event’s unique chip draw format.
On race day, Brown nabbed a slight starting line advantage versus Reed, but his machine started losing traction shortly after while his opponent made a clean pass in the opposite lane to advance. While he would have preferred to bring home a race day trophy to go along with his No. 1 qualifier trophy, Brown is pleased overall with the team’s outing in Bradenton, which began with two days of testing on Tuesday and Wednesday before qualifying for the event started on Thursday.
“Testing went well, we learned a lot of different things over these last few days that are areas we can improve on and take with us into the year,” said Brown, who is gearing up for his fourth season as an NHRA team owner.
“Obviously, Q3 was not what we wanted with that tire blowing out on us but to recover from that and bounce back like we did for Q4 and drop low E.T. was really impressive,” Brown said, referring to his unofficial career-best E.T. of 3.644 seconds at 322.11 mph, which moved him to the top of the timing sheets to start race day. “We didn’t get the result we wanted first round. The track today was the hottest we’ve raced on all week, and our car was just trying to go too fast. We had it slowed down early but not enough there through the 330 mark. But all in all, our time spent here was a win. We made one of the quickest passes we’ve ever ran, and we know how to do it now. I’m really pumped up and really happy with how this team is working together and how quick we made that turnaround from Q3 to Q4 with switching cars. We’ll go back to Indy, get everything prepped for Gainesville, and get ready for the start of the season.”
Up next for Brown and the AB Motorsports team is the 2025 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season opener at Gainesville Raceway where Brown returns as the defending champion of the Pep Boys All-Star Top Fuel Callout, a specialty race-within-a-race contested on Saturday during qualifying. Prior to kicking off the Gatornationals race weekend on Friday, March 7, Brown will participate in the pre-season Wednesday test session at the Gainesville, Fla. facility.
This story was originally published on February 10, 2025. 
