BROWN, TODD TOP TOYOTAS IN ATLANTA NHRA
COMMERCE, GA –Antron Brown (Top Fuel) and J.R. Todd (Funny Car) each advanced to the second round to lead 
Toyota in the Arby’s NHRA Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway, Sunday.
After battling rain for the first two days of the weekend, Sunday’s temperatures soared to 86 degrees with track temperatures climbed over 120 degrees resulting in numerous cars struggling to get down the track.
Brown ran his quickest pass of the weekend in Sunday’s opening run as he registered a 3.771 in defeating Clay Millican. In round two, Brown had a sizable starting line advantage and held the lead until around 800 feet when he hit a patch of oil on the track and lost traction, allowing Brittany Force to chase him down. Despite the late troubles, Brown ran the third-quickest pass of the session, falling by 0.0143 seconds or about six feet.
“It’s a bummer when after you run you see the NHRA Safety Safari team cleaning up oil on the track, and you know it didn’t come from your race car,” said Brown, who’s opening run was the quickest overall on the day. “It must’ve come from one of the cars that ran before us. When I got to that point on the track, it barely spun the tires and it was enough to slow us down. Our car was on a 3.81 run. That all being said, the good news is we feel confident in our car, our team has turned a corner, and we’re looking forward to going to Virginia. When the tracks get hot, I know that we can run with anybody and having run low E.T. of round one, and likely low of round two, I feel really confident and looking forward to some great things for this Matco Toyota team.”
Todd qualified second after running the quick time on Friday and then the second-quickest pass on Saturday, but the changing weather conditions haunted the DHL Toyota on race day. Despite defeating Jim Campbell in the first round on a red light, he struggled to make it cleanly down the track in either of his two runs. In the second round, he had a starting line advantage over Tommy Johnson, but was up in smoke right at the hit to end his day.
Todd’s Kalitta Motorsports teammates also struggled on Sunday. Doug Kalitta had the starting line advantage over Shawn Reed in his opening run, but started to lose traction just before half-track, while fellow Top Fuel driver Richie Crampton hazed the tires on the top end in an opening round loss to Scott Palmer.
Shawn Langdon, the most recent Funny Car winner at Charlotte, held a slight starting line advantage over Ron Capps, but appeared to drop a cylinder and it pushed him out of the groove where the car lost traction in a first-round defeat.
The 2019 Mello Yello Drag Racing Series is off next weekend for Mother’s Day before heading to the Virginia Motorsports Park in Richmond for the Virginia Nationals, May 17-19.
