Qualified: No. 7 (3.750 E.T. at 320.58 MPH)
The Results:
E1: 3.728 E.T. at 328.86 MPH defeated Doug Kalitta 3.792 E.T. at 323.58 MPH
E2: 3.842 E.T. at 323.66 MPH defeated by Clay Millican 3.803 E.T. at 323.04 MPH
Race Recap:
The winningest NHRA Mello Yello series driver in Gateway Motorsports Park history qualified in the top half of the field to match up against Doug Kalitta in round one of eliminations on Sunday morning. Kalitta’s 3.792-second pass was no match for the three-time Top Fuel world champion’s session-best 3.727-second winning run.
Against his round two opponent Clay Millican, Brown was first out of the gate but Millican pulled ahead near the 330-mark and never trailed, ending Brown’s chances at picking up a sixth St. Louis trophy. Brown and the Matco Tools/U.S. Army team enter the next event rounding out the top half of the Top Fuel standings, sitting in fifth.
Quotable:
“We felt real confident coming into today. We’ve been working hard and we’ve just been getting better each run. We’ve even been finding the small little things that have been nipping at our heels, so we felt good that we could bring it home today. The day started off great for our Matco Tools/U.S. Army/Toyota. We ran low E.T. of first round. In round two, we just backed it off too much. At Reading, we didn’t back it off enough and then in the second round today we backed it off too much. Now we’ve got a game plan for the next race that we’re just going to go in the middle. There are still four races left, so there’s a lot of racing still to go. We wanted to take a step up in the points, but we’ll maintain where we are at. We just need to keep building.”