NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals
Event 11 of 24 (Bristol)
Bristol Dragway
Bristol, Tenn.
June 14-16, 2019
Bristol Elimination Highlights:
- Antron Brown retained his No. 4 ranking in the Top Fuel point standings
Qualified: No. 4 (3.768 E.T. at 325.14 MPH)
The Results:
E1: 3.863 E.T. at 318.24 MPH defeated Audrey Worm 4.082 E.T. at 279.21 MPH
E2: 6.602 E.T. at 110.14 MPH defeated by Mike Salinas 3.908 E.T. at 316.97 MPH
Race Recap:
Aside from the recently reinstated Richmond, Va. event, the Thunder Valley Nationals is the only other race on the current NHRA schedule where Antron Brown hasn’t been able to seal the deal and leave with the Wally trophy. He qualified fourth for the 19th running of the Bristol Dragway race and drew Audrey Worm in the first round. Brown had the starting line advantage and navigated his Matco Tools Toyota straight down the groove for the win. Against Mike Salinas in the second round, Brown was once again first on the tree, but his machine lost traction right at the hit of the throttle, and his opponent was able to drive to the clean round win.
Quotable:
“This is a demanding track, and when you’re able to pull out a win here, you feel like you’ve done something special. We’re working hard. We qualified where we wanted to qualify at. We just need to get our strategy right. Our car wants to go really quick now. We’ve been working on making it aggressive early. We backed it down today, but we just didn’t back it down enough, and the track showed it to us. Nobody in the right lane made it past the starting line in the second Top Fuel session. Everyone smoked the tires right away. Our competitors went down there and ran a 3.90 (in round two) and got the job done. We’ve got Norwalk next week, and we’ll get right back after it. It’s a tight point battle right now. There’s still a lot of