Brown Coming Off “Injured Reserve” to Race at Dallas
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Second-generation Top Alcohol Funny Car racer Bryan Brown had to miss the first race of the season because of a stomach ache that turned out to be a lot more than that, and it’s pretty much been all downhill from there.
It isn’t that Brown hasn’t gotten his car to run or hasn’t been able to cut a light – he has, every time. It’s his health, or lack thereof, that’s kept him on the sidelines almost all year. It all started right before the first race of his season, the Central Regional at Houston, a race he’d been looking forward to all winter, which he had to skip to have his appendix removed.
“It happened at the last minute, and I mean the last minute,” said Brown, son of Alcohol Funny Car veteran Burl Brown. “It was the Wednesday morning before the race, and the car was already loaded, the trailer was hooked up, and I was ready to roll. I felt this weird pain in my stomach and figured it was nothing, it would go away. But it wasn’t going away. Finally, I had to go to the doctor, and he told me, ‘You need to go to the hospital – your appendix has to come out now. I said, ‘Can’t it wait till Monday? I kind of have somewhere to be,’ and he said, ‘No way,’ and that was it.”
A couple months later, on the last day of May, Brown wrecked a dirt bike, separating his right shoulder and collapsing a lung, and it looked like he’d be missing another race, the Central Regional at Tulsa. “I said, ‘The hell with that – I’m going,’ and went,” Brown said. “It never should have happened in the first place. I was just screwing around, being stupid, and wrecked it. If this was 10 years ago, I probably would have popped right up and been fine, but I’m not 26 anymore. I’m 36. My shoulder hurt like hell, and my lung hurt even more. I had a cracked rib that was poking into it, and I could barely breathe. It felt like someone was stabbing me in the back with a knife, and they told me I wouldn’t be able to pick up more than two pounds for a while.”
Brown postponed surgery and entered the Tulsa race, but it was the same story there as at his first two races, Houston and Topeka: out first round. He was on time all three times and made it to the finish line under power all three time with consistent, competitive times of 5.80, 5.70, and 5.78. It’s just that he was facing a Top 5 driver all three times, too: championship contenders Steve Harker (Houston), Jay Payne (Topeka) and Shane Westerfield (Tulsa). “We haven’t really run that bad – just not good enough to beat guys like that,” said Brown, who has yet to cut a light worse than .051 this year.
Now, after three months away from the track and with his surgery finally behind him, Brown already knows he’s going to miss another race, the Central Regional closer at Noble – not because the car won’t be ready, not because he can’t get time off from work, and not because of some other physical ailment. It’s because he’ll be helping his dad at the rescheduled Speed Week event in Bonneville that was rained out in August.
“It sucks – I’ve already missed enough races this year – but by the time we get out to Bonneville, it’ll be fun, I’m sure,” said Brown, now in his fourth year behind the wheel. “My dad’s shooting for 280-285 mph this year with an injected nitro motor – he’s already gone 218 or 219 with a Chevy – and it should be pretty cool, but after all this work, it sure would be nice to get back in my car.”
This weekend at the NHRA Fall Nationals in Dallas, annually one of the toughest races on the circuit and the one at which he made his driving debut four years ago, Brown gets one more shot at making all those hours in the shop pay off. “I’ve always liked the Motorplex, but I almost dread going there every year because we always seem to hurt stuff at that place,” he said. “There’s always carnage. It seems like every year there’s at least one block on the ground by the time we’re done. Last year, we torched a head and the block three runs in a row, but there should be plenty of help if we have to change motors. I live about hour and a half north of Dallas, so we should have 20 or 30 people there to help if we need it. Hopefully, we won’t need it.”
Hopefully, he won’t be in too much pain to drive.
“When my dad strapped me in that first time after I wrecked the bike, I thought I was going to pass out when he gave the belts that final tug, but once the car is started, you can’t really feel anything anyway,” Brown said. “I haven’t driven since I had the surgery, and it still hurts pretty bad, but I think I’ll be alright. I’m going to have the clutch a little loose for the first run so I won’t have to pull on the brake as hard. I guess we’ll know if I can drive the car right after the first burnout. If I keep on going down the track and don’t back up, I can’t do it; if you see that car go into reverse, I can.”
