BROWN TAKES TOYOTA TO WINNER’S CIRCLE IN TOPEKA NHRA

TOPEKA, KS – Antron Brown defeated Steve Torrence in the Top Fuel final to win the Menards NHRA Heartland Park Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka Sunday. The victory is the second of the season for Brown and the 63rd of his Mello Yello Series career.

After qualifying third, the long-time Toyota driver defeated Kebin Kinsley in the opening round, fellow Toyota driver Shawn Langdon in round two and Leah Pritchett in the semi-finals to set up his match-up with Torrence. For the weekend, Brown ran 3.71 or better in five of his seven runs, including three 3.6-second passes. His opening round 3.691 was the best run of race day.

“We always have a great car and run well here, we just hadn’t won here before,” relayed the three-time world champion. “This weekend the competition has been so tight and on edge every lap. My hat is off to the entire Matco Tools/Toyota team. We got into the old groove that we’ve been in and we went out there and raced our hearts out. It feels really good to get a win here in Topeka. I have wanted to win this race for so long. We just attacked it like we do every race and gave it our all every round and this weekend it worked out for us. I was flying in from Vegas this week (where he was shooting Top Gear) and I looked at the weather for this weekend and when I saw it was going to be cool I was thinking it’s going to be fast in Topeka. We didn’t have any tornadoes this weekend. We just had a whole bunch of hurricanes going down the track.”

After defeating Scott Palmer in round one, Doug Kalitta did everything but reach the Top semi-finals in his second-round run. Kalitta registered the best Top Fuel reaction time and the second-quickest pass of the round only to lose by nine one-thousandths to Leah Pritchett.

Langdon defeated fellow Kalitta Toyota driver Troy Coughlin in the opening round before losing to Brown in round two. After joining Kalitta Motorsports in the fourth race of the season, Langdon is now just one spot out of the Countdown to the Championship playoffs in 11th.

In Funny Car, a pair of Camrys were victorious in the first round. J.R. Todd knocked off Brian Stewart before falling to Matt Hagan in round two, while Del Worsham defeated Tommy Johnson and then lost to Jack Beckman. Both Toyota drivers gained one position in the point standings with Todd climbing up to eighth and Worsham moving into the 11th spot, approximately one round out of the final playoff berth. Both Cruz Pedregon and Chad Head were eliminated in the first round.

The NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series is back in action in two weeks at the New England Dragway in Epping, N.H., June 2-4. Brown is the defending race champion.