Four-time and reigning NHRA Top Fuel world champion Antron Brown’s Sunday race day at the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals ended early, but Brown and his Matco Tools team learned from the traction issues that bit them in the opening round. The fourth-year driver and team owner and crew chief Brian Corradi are motivated to bounce back from the tire-smoking incident as the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series moves on from In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip to The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Brown made moves in qualifying, which also saw him compete in the Right Trailers Top Fuel All-Star Callout. In the first session and the first round of the Callout, Brown laid down a 3.695-second pass at 336.65 mph to sit third, defeating Shawn Langdon and earning a bonus point in the process. He went up in smoke right away in the second session and second round of the Callout, then made a smooth 3.704 E.T. at 337.16 mph – the third-quickest pass of the third session – to earn his second bonus point in qualifying. A consistent 3.696 E.T. at 336.74 mph in the final qualifying session gave Brown confidence going into eliminations in the No. 7 spot.
Brown, who won the season-opening NHRA Gatornationals to start the month, met up with motorsports Hall of Famer Tony Stewart in Sunday’s first round of eliminations, a battle between two Indiana-based driver/team owners. Brown left second, but it was the tire smoke that followed just after Brown launched that ended his day.
“It was tuned up and we were trying to get our car freed up a little bit – and it did,” said Brown, a four-time winner of the NHRA Finals at Pomona. “It actually went .832 (seconds) to the 60-foot mark. We had the driveshaft up there pretty good and we just got on the other side of it. We actually got on the fast side for the way the track conditions were. We’re going to figure it out. We came in on the low side. Now we’re on the high side. We’ve just got to hit it in the middle now.”
Brown takes comfort in knowing Corradi and the Matco Tools team recognize what went wrong and how to prevent it at the next race or even later in the season when facing similar conditions. Brown also knows he has work to do on the starting line, especially as the NHRA Mission Foods tour heads into the “four-wide” stretch of the season, starting in Las Vegas.
“I’m just looking forward to getting to Vegas,” Brown said. “We have a week off to regroup and get our stuff back together. But all in all, we’re running some really good speeds. We’re running some really super-fast increments everywhere else. I’ve got to do a better job too. I don’t know how I missed the tree like that in the first round. We’ve just got to go back and do our work and come back in Vegas with our mean face on.”
Brown and the AB Motorsports team, now third in the Top Fuel points standings, will chase the first of three possible four-wide wins April 11-13 at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
This story was originally published on March 31, 2025. 
