Drag-racing teams every summer throttle up for a unique experience at Seattle, the city built on Boeing that has embraced an eclectic dining palate, absorbed a jolt of java through Starbucks headquarters, and gained as much fame for its Microsoft-spearheaded technology corridor as for its iconic Space Needle.
 
Top Fuel drivers Antron Brown and Cory McClenathan, his Don Schumacher Racing stablemate, got their competitive juices brewing earlier this week with a special Starbucks experience.

Drag-racing teams every summer throttle up for a unique experience at Seattle, the city built on Boeing that has embraced an eclectic dining palate, absorbed a jolt of java through Starbucks headquarters, and gained as much fame for its Microsoft-spearheaded technology corridor as for its iconic Space Needle.
 
Top Fuel drivers Antron Brown and Cory McClenathan, his Don Schumacher Racing stablemate, got their competitive juices brewing earlier this week with a special Starbucks experience.
 
Taping a "Gettin' Down With Brown" segment for the NHRA's broadcast on ESPN2, the two joined Willard "Dub" Hay, Senior Starbucks vice-president, coffee and global procurement. Together, Brown said, they explored "all the regular ground coffee that's from Latin America to all the citrus-tasting ones from Africa and different tropical climates."
 
The Matco Tools Dragster driver said the experience "was cool and unique. We got to try a whole bunch of different coffee that they get from all over the world. It's all selective, high-grade coffee. Coffee's just like wine -- they grow it on the side of the mountain, all around volcanic ash. It grows on trees, like little coffee cherries. It's pretty cool."
 
Hay and his colleagues treated Brown to his favorite order -- a white chocolate mocha latte. "They put the cream on top with the full Vitamin D milk in it," he said, eyes as big as clutch plates. "Ah, let me tell you something: that thing was out of control. Out of control!"
 
The process was intriguing, he said.
 
"It's unreal how they actually taste coffee, the way they sip it in and slurp it around, slosh it in their mouths, and spit it in a tub. You slurp it in, right in your mouth, get it on the top of your palate, and  you swish it around, and you spit it out, almost like chewing tobacco, in a little can," Brown said. "You don't want to keep on drinking all that coffee, because you'll be all tore up by the time you taste all the different coffees that they have."
 
He said in tasting, no one has anything, such as sherbet, to cleans the palate between flavors. "You just get after it," he said, "and you taste the difference in each and every one of them."
 
Starbucks executives, he said, "take coffee to a new level. And when me and Cory were sipping that coffee, it was definitely high-octane. It was like 90-percent nitro of coffee.
 
"I was on the ceiling -- and I'm still on the ceiling right now!" Brown said before closing Friday qualifying with a scalding 3.964-second elapsed time that was good for No. 5 in the Top Fuel order for the 23rd edition of the Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways.
 
By the end of his high-powered coffee klatch, Brown sounded like a Starbucks marketing manager.
 
"The coffee with chocolate has a lot of calories in it, but the Vivanno (smoothie) sets you back and gives you something nutritional, very low-calorie and healthy for you," he said. "And they've got a new machine coming out that's only at 50 locations right now that's pretty out of control about how you can make all these different blends of coffee. I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me!' "
 
But don't expect to see "Starbucks" emblazoned on the side of his or McClenathan's dragster. No one discussed sponsorship possibilities.
 
"We didn't talk to them about none of that stuff," Brown said. "We went out there for a good time with 'Gettin' Down With Brown.' It was just a treat getting to go out there and hang out with them.
 
"Every time we come to Seattle, it's definitely going to be my main stop, the Starbucks headquarters every year," he said, already planning his return visit.
 
Brown said he drinks coffee but confessed that "I don't drink it every morning." However, he said, "When we're on the road, we always make a Starbucks run in the morning. I always get my white chocolate mocha latte and always get me a Strawberry Banana Vivanno. That's always my stop every morning on the road. They've got my vote. Now I'm kind of addicted. I'll probably get it every day at home."
 
Brown's great-grandmother drank coffee every day, and the coffee pot was on at the Brown household when he grew up in Chesterfield, New Jersey.
 
"But this ain't like the coffee Grandma drank, trust me," he said.