EPPING, N.H. (June 21, 2014) – Antron Brown earned his second No. 1 qualifying position of the 2014 NHRA season Saturday afternoon at New England Dragway.
The 2012 NHRA Top Fuel champion used a track record elapsed time of 3.770-seconds to earn the 36th top qualifier award of his decorated career. Brown’s pole-winning pass came Friday evening under the lights at the Epping, N.H. track.
“We know we have a great race car here with this Matco Tools team at DSR,” Brown said after claiming his 25th career No. 1 qualifying award in Top Fuel. “We brought out a new chassis last weekend at Bristol and it was flawless. That credit goes to the DSR fab shop and this Matco team. They give us great equipment and put us in the position to do well.
“We ran good this weekend at Epping and got the green Mello Yello hat for being the No. 1 qualifier and it’s always cool to be the last driver introduced during driver intros on Sunday morning.
Brown, who enters the 11th race on the 2014 NHRA Mello Yello Series schedule ranked second in the Top Fuel standings, made three solid runs in qualifying with both of Friday’s laps in the 3.7-second range.
“Our goal is to get this Matco car back into the winner’s circle and we want to do that tomorrow at Epping,” Brown, who has three wins this season, said. “We have eight races before the Countdown (to the Championship) begins and we really want that top spot. We need to go out, take things one round at a time, and chip away at (Doug) Kalitta’s lead.”
Brown looks to make history on Sunday as he enters race day with 496 career NHRA round wins. If he can walk away from New England Dragway with the coveted Wally trophy, he’ll reach the 500 round win milestone.
The following are Brown’s qualifying results and other notes for the NHRA New England Nationals:
TOP FUEL
No. 1 Qualifier: Antron Brown (DSR) 3.770 sec.*, 323.58 mph (*track record)
ANTRON BROWN, Matco Tools Top Fuel Dragster
Qualifying Position: No. 1
First round opponent: Todd Paton
QUALIFYING
FRIDAY: 3.790 sec., 315.34 mph (Session 1), 3.770, 323.58 (Session 2)
SATURDAY: 3.844, 312.71 (Session 3), 4.999, 143.46 (Session 4)