Antron Brown can understand how Steve Torrence feels these days; well, kinda sorta.

Torrence has only beaten the defending Top Fuel champion twice in their 22 head-to-head races. 
 
Brown, while in his first three seasons found himself on the short-end of the stick in rivalries against two of the top running drivers in his first three seasons of Top Fuel.
 
Every time the three-time NHRA Top Fuel champion Brown has rolled into Bristol Dragway, he's reminded of a 2011 final round against Larry Dixon.
 
"I remember when I came into Top Fuel racing, it was Tony Schumacher and the Larry Dixon show," Brown recalled, face cracking a smile. "It was either Tony winning or Larry winning. When I came over here, if you wanted to be mentioned amongst the best, you have to beat the best."
 
Dixon taught the third-year fuel driver a lesson about not counting his chickens before they hatch.
 
"I wanted to beat him so bad that I knew I left on him, I was gone, going down the race track," Dixon said.  "I did everything really, really fast. So I mean by everything really fast, I was like 'I did this, I did that."
 
"Next thing I do is just hit the chutes, and I’m like, ‘I’m hitting the chutes, why am I hitting the chutes?"
 
"And my chute popped out before the finish line and jerked my car back, and I lost by two-thousandths."
 
Dixon's victory extended his dominance to 13 - 4 over Brown.
 
Then there was his one moment of elation of victory against Tony Schumacher which came in his rookie season with a monumental first victory in the NHRA Southern Nationals final against Top Fuel's winningest driver. It would be the only time he would beat Schumacher in seven races.
 
In fact, they beat Brown like a drum for those first three seasons.
 
Maybe, Brown reasons, he was trying too hard to beat Dixon and Schumacher.
 
Maybe the same forces are at work against Torrence in his battles against Brown.
 
"You try so hard with somebody that you want to beat so bad," Brown admitted. "Steve had the car to beat us numerous times. He just messed up just like how I messed up, against like Larry Dixon and other people. And what it does is it takes you to a moment in time where you learn all I can do is what I do. And that’s what I learned from that whole deal with Larry Dixon."  

A huge series advantage means nothing more or less to Brown, he's coming to the line to win.
 
"The way Steve feels about me, I feel that about him," Brown said. "It’s not like I go up there and say, ‘I got this."
 
"[At Englishtown] I went up there and gave him my A+ level game as I do, every time. It's going to be a brawl. So when I lined up against him, I didn’t go up there and go ‘Oh, I could pass this round by cutting an .80 light’. Oh heck no, I went up there and tried to take the tree with me. I tried to take the tree and the roots so he couldn’t see."