BROWN TAKES TOYOTA TO GATORNATIONALS FINAL
GAINESVILLE, FL – Antron Brown was the top finishing Toyota at today’s Amalie Oil NHRA Gatornationals as he 
advanced to his first Top Fuel final round of the season before falling to Tony Schumacher at the Gainesville Raceway in Gainesville, Fla.
Brown defeated Chris Karamesines in the opening round and then dispatched fellow Toyota drivers Troy Coughlin Jr. and Doug Kalitta in the next two rounds before his match-up with Schumacher in the final.
“It was a good day,” said Brown, who also was the quickest qualifier on Saturday. “We learned a lot this weekend and we worked flawlessly. We had a couple of bugs hit us here and there. We were doing some work this weekend and I couldn’t be prouder of our Matco Tools/U.S. Army/Toyota boys. I’ll tell you this, we’ve been eating a little bit, but we’re hungry right now. We’re going to keep driving and keep pushing. The competition is at an all-time high. When you win a race, you’ve done something special and we want to get back to where we belong. We know what we have to do and we’re just going to keep pushing. We had a little bug in the last round, but that’s Fuel racing. The key is we learned something from it. We give it our best every lap and every time we go down the track we feel better and better.”
With today’s showing, Brown has now advanced to the semi-finals or beyond in 18 of the last 24 races since the 2016 Gatornationals.
“This team works so efficiently and it shows how well we work to make things better – and you have to out here,” added Brown. “We’re only getting stronger and I love the way that feels – and we’re doing it earlier than we did it last year.”
It was almost Kalitta that met up with Schumacher in the final as the Mac Tools Toyota driver lost to Brown by just 18 one-thousandths of a second in the semi-finals. Kalitta was the number two qualifier and knocked off Ike Maier and then defeated point leader Leah Pritchett on a holeshot in round two.
Coughlin, a leading rookie of the year contender, had another solid week after qualifying sixth and then advancing to the second round against Brown. He had the advantage over the reigning champion at the one-eighth mile mark before the car made a move toward the wall. He ended up brushing the wall, but suffered no injuries and a minimal amount of damage to the car.
In Funny Car, all four Camry drivers were eliminated in the opening round. Alexis DeJoria was one of the few drivers able to make a clean pass in the right lane in the first round, registering a 3.92-second pass, but fell by just .012 seconds to Ron Capps. J.R. Todd, Del Worsham and Cruz Pedregon all were unable to make a clean pass down the race track.
“Talk about consistency,” said DeJoria, who ran five consecutive 3.96-second or better passes. “First round we ran another 3.92 like we did in qualifying. We were the only team in Funny Car to make it down the track in the 3-second zone every time, so we definitely had something for them.”
The NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series moves on to The Strip at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the Denso Spark Plug NHRA nationals, March 31-April 2.
