After four of five qualifying attempts at the Dodge Power Brokers NHRA U.S. Nationals, defending race winner Antron Brown sat on the outside of the qualified field looking in.

Brown’s weekend-best pass was only good enough for 17th on the 16-car ladder, leaving him with one final attempt to make the field and defend his U.S. Nationals victory.

As fate would have it, his hail mary lap in his fifth and final attempt was just enough to sneak into the field in the 15th spot, a heart-stopping moment he would use as a rallying cry to steer his Matco Tools dragster to a stunning victory Monday in the 69th running of the U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.

“This is one of those getting dirty (wins),” Brown said. “We went through all of the trials and tribulations, and that’s what makes this win so special. We got thrown a curveball, a couple of them, actually. And the thing is, we just stood at that plate. We were down and out. We had two strikes, bases loaded. It was a full count. And when that thing came up in that qualifying session, we just hit an RBI and brought two people in; that’s what it felt like.

“Through all of the agony, through all of the pain, through all of the stuff that we went through in qualifying, the only one that’s got ice in his veins is (Mark) Oswald. He never gets down. He was just like, ‘We’re just going to have to do it.’ You get frustrated because you want to do so well, and coming off of Brainerd and the momentum we had coming in, we were like, “We’re going to be alright.’ It took an entire team effort to get it done today.”

Ironically, that 3.806-second run on Sunday during Q5 felt like an eternity to Brown as he described the agony of not being in the field at the U.S. Nationals heading into the final round of qualifying.

“We thought we put something in that we tested at Brainerd that was going to be right, but when we got here, it didn’t want no part of it,” Brown explained. “We had to change one disc in our pack and get through this race, and (the team) said, ‘We’re going to put it on Q3 at Brainerd where it was hot and it should go 80 flat.’ When I left the starting line, that light took a long time to come up. When I hit the gas pedal, I felt the engine go up and the car took off. When I got to 300 feet, I was like, ‘Stay hooked up, baby, stay hooked up.’

“That was the longest 3.8-second run of my entire life. It felt like I was in it for 15 seconds, and when the 3.80 popped on the board, I was relieved. And then once I found out that we had one of the fastest runs of the session, I thought, ‘We’re going to be fine on race day.’”

 

 

 

 

From the bottom of the ladder, Brown navigated a gauntlet of former champions and the winningest driver on the NHRA tour in 2023 to collect his fifth overall victory at the U.S. Nationals and third in Top Fuel, winning the sport’s biggest race in its premier class in 2011 and again last season.

“My hat goes off to my team because they had persistence to beat all the resistance this weekend,” Brown said. “They never quit, they never stopped. And when I got in that car, I just blocked everything out, and I stood in there like Ray Charles. I kept my head down and just kept on hitting it hard, trying to stay focused on keeping the car straight. It’s one of those weekends where we just never quit. And if you want to win the U.S. Nationals, that’s what you have to do.”

Brown powered to his third win of the season in a tremendous contest against Steve Torrence. The two drivers left with near-identical reaction times before Brown simply pulled away in his Toyota-backed dragster to record a 3.779-second pass at 328.54 miles per hour, his second-best lap of the weekend. Torrence crossed the stripe with an equally stout 3.870 at 327.43 mph in his Capco Contractors machine, coming mere inches from earning his third trophy at the granddaddy of them all.

The win was the 74th of Brown’s career and his second straight after winning at Brainerd two weeks prior.

“Sometimes you have a weekend like we did in Brainerd where we couldn’t do no wrong, and then here everything that we thought we were doing right, it was wrong,” Brown said. “So we figured, ‘Hey, you know what? This package here, that’s not happening, it’s not working,’ and we just had to make the changes. People don’t realize how close these cars are from going down the track and not going down the track. One clutch disc, taking it out and putting another one in, made the difference. Then, on race day, we made another change, and it worked out good all day long. It’s one of those deals where you’ve got to have that faith and go with it.”

Torrence was far from Brown’s toughest opponent on Monday as the three-time NHRA champion also faced off against six-time race winner on the NHRA tour this season, Justin Ashley, and defending class champion Brittany Force.

While Brown was relieved just to make the field, his consolation prize was a round one matchup against Force in a race that looked like it was going to go down to the wire. Both drivers were on a run until the engine in Force’s machine expired with a fiery concussion just past the midway point, allowing Brown to cruise to the win with this quickest pass of the entire weekend - a 3.749 at 320.05 mph.

“We get into the field and quickly realize tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. we’re racing Brittany Force with David Grubnic,” Brown said. “We tried to make the car run 70 flat, and it was on that run when it actually shot a spark plug out at 500 feet. We didn’t even make it to half-track, and then she had a mishap. When we got the winning 74, we’re like, ‘Oh, we can run with all of them.’”

 

 

 

 

Brown cleanly drove around Clay Millican in a round two win with a 3.791 before squaring off with the winningest driver on the NHRA tour in 2023, Justin Ashley.

In a thrilling finish for fans of old-school pedal fests, Ashley got away first but quickly lost traction as Brown cruised past. But just past the midway point of the 1,000-foot distance track, Brown too lost traction as both drivers limped across the line, with Brown winning on a pedestrian 4.924 to Ashley’s 6.569.

“When we got into the semis, we had that thing tuned up for Justin and Justin did too,” Brown said. “The track got a little tricky. We got the win, but I was pedaling, going sideways and I wanted to win so bad.”

Torrence reached his fourth final round of the season, and secured second in the Top Fuel regular season standings, with wins over Will Smith, Shawn Langdon and Doug Kalitta.

With as much momentum as anyone in the sport on their side, Brown now shifts his focus to the Countdown to the Championship, which begins in two weeks at Maple Grove Raceway, where suddenly his team is one of the hottest on the entire tour.

“Before we got to this race or even Brainerd, I think we went to four final rounds, and we lost to Justin twice in final rounds that could’ve gone either way,” Brown said. “That team is on fire. That’s definitely a team to beat for the championship this year, so we’ve all got our work cut out for us. But I know for sure that our team is deadly. If we just keep up and keep working like we are, we have the best chances of anybody in making it happen.

“With Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald, this whole team, we’re just getting stronger. And the longer we go, the more we will fine tune it, the better we will get.”