As Antron Brown sees it, anything worth having will be tough. He's hasn't officially hit the track as the owner/driver for Antron Brown Motorsports, and already Brown has found the experience to be tough sledding.

It's no big deal to the two-time NHRA champion; Brown who entered his new role prepared for the challenge. 

The last couple of seasons has been a trial run for Brown, who had the luxury of operating under the Don Schumacher Racing umbrella. Now he's holding his own. 

"The craziest part is that I never was just a driver," Brown said. "I never just showed up and jumped in the race car. I always did numerous things. Whether it's with the crew guys, implementing stuff on the car, coming up with ideas there, working with sponsors, and helping them on their side, to get an ROI (Return On Investment).  Not just putting a sticker on the car, but for them to get a real ROI that they invest on the race team, where they can get some funds back to help support the race program. I was very hands-on with all that stuff, and all the day-to-day things, for a long time."

Many don't realize this year is not the first for Brown as a team owner. When he raced Pro Stock Stock Motorcycle with Troy Vincent, Brown fielded his own team in the competitive world of the two-wheelers. 

"I helped Troy run the Pro-Stock motorcycle team, and even here, under a GSR umbrella, I had my hands into a lot of different deals where I actually catered to all of our partners, our sponsors, did a lot of the stuff," Brown explained. "For the last two years of my last racing career, I had my hand in where some of the sponsorships went through ABM, already, even though we were racing at DSR. It was one of those deals where I just gradually got fed, and fed different responsibilities. Now, it's all up to us here at ABM, our whole team that we have here in our offices, to make everything happen."

 

 

 

Now for Brown, it's sink or swim, regardless of the lingering effects of a pandemic or economic downturn. The bank note is in his name. 

"Everything's tough. You got to hustle and bustle everything else going on, and you go the way the economy is where it's hard to get parts and pieces," Brown said. "That's the real struggle right now, is getting stuff you need in the timeframe that you need it in, to actually show up at the first race. Especially, we didn't start from scratch; we had the benefit of buying a lot of parts and pieces from DSM (Don Schumacher Manufacturing). We got a lot of parts and pieces there; we got a lot of parts and pieces from a lot of other entities. We did everything at the right time. Trying to put it all together, so we have it all together at the right time to leave to go testing before we race Pomona."

So why would a drag racer who appeared to have very little pressure on his shoulders toss the security blanket away and assume all the risks? It wasn't as if Don Schumacher Racing was a bad gig at all. Brown had a very good thing going with Schumacher. 

"To have complete control, and also to be able to just take care of your team the way you want them to be taken care," Brown rsaid. "Being able to have the people that you want to have. Build a rapport, and have a close-knit family-oriented team. When you race at a place that had eight race cars, five race cars, four race cars, six race cars, seven race cars, a lot of that stuff, that's one thing where you could see the employees; they were a number. It wasn't that first name basis, except for the people that you work with every day. 

 

 

 

"I didn't even know everybody on all the race teams. I remember when I got to DSR, there were only three race cars here, and you knew everybody in the shop. The shop got so big where I walked past people and wondered, "What's their name over there?" It got to the point where you didn't know everybody. 

"For me, personally. I wanted to go a different direction; I wanted to do different things; I wanted to work with Toyota more hands-on. We weren't able to do that before when you were in a co-branded shop with Mopar and Toyota. Now, we're just straight Toyota. All hands on deck. They're giving us more information on their engineering side, on their staff side. We have a lot more things that are more open because we're sectioned off to ourselves now.

Brown credits Schumacher and others for a wealth of positive advice which led him on the right path. One of those surprisingly was a Funny Car racer - Bob Tasca, who established the first of the Schumacher satellite teams.

"[Bob] has helped out tremendously throughout this whole process," Brown said. "He lent me his ear, and gave me information, and helped me along the way. He goes, "If there's anything you need, I got you." When you have people talk to you like that, and also, one of my great, great friends, my brother from another mother, Steve Torrence - Steve and Bob Lagana and all those guys over there, they've been very instrumental in this. 

"Every question I had, they were able to answer it. That's been a great, great, great help for us, also other people to talk to. They come out the woodwork, [Don] Prudhomme, I could hit him up, and he'll give me some background information when he was doing it. Robert Hight has been really good at it. I was able to ask him some different questions and stuff like that. He'll shoot you straight and me back and forth to him. 

 

 

 

 

"This is coming from people who have been around this sport for a long time, people who will be able to help me and steer the cause. I know they have successful programs out there. I'm like this is how they do it, this is how this one does it, this is how they're doing it."

Make no mistake, adding the Dustin Dave Motorsports team and its driver Justin Ashley was a significant move in the solidifying of Antron Brown Motorsports team. 

The move made sense for Brown in every aspect and also delivered a measure of sentimentality. Ashley's father, Mike, purchased the Matco Tools team back in 2009 when Brown was the driver. As part of the purchase, Ashley brought in his tuners from his days of racing, Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald, to work with Brown. The purchase enabled the team to remain in competition and they recorded six wins en route to a third-place finish. 

"Having this alliance, leaning on them and seeing how they do things, from a one-car standpoint and how they're able to be successful, and be competitive, on a budget that's nowhere near what other people have to race off of is important," Brown said. It's been a lot of help out there, a lot of help outside, where you could pick and pull, and pull different things from all these different race teams, and see what they do well, and how you can bring that, and put that into your race program: certain pieces and parts of it. Everybody's program is different one way or another. 

"The coolest part about our sport, everybody has an open mind, and they have an open book when it comes to managing and making a race team work. They're not scared to share what they do to help you out. I've been very fortunate in that."