Brown, Matco Tools team head to Pomona for Finals with chance to defend NHRA Top Fuel championship

ROWNSBURG, IN – Antron Brown’s Matco Tools team has had a bookend season with a strong start being matched by a strong finish as the reigning Top Fuel champion of the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season.

Brown won two of the first seven events this season, and has won two of the last three.

In between, however, the Matco Tools team stumbled and fell what seemed to be out of contention to win back-to-back championships when he was ranked ninth in points after the first race in the NHRA Countdown to the Championship when the team did not qualify for the playoff opener near Charlotte.

A hard charge over the last three Countdown events shows the team’s resilience that has driven Brown back into title contention.

Brown’s Don Schumacher Racing team was in the winner’s circle two weeks ago at Las Vegas and three weeks before that near Reading, Pa. That would have seemed to be enough for him to be closer than 102 points to leader Shawn Langdon heading to Pomona, Calif., where the finale to the 24-race season begins Thursday.

The most points a driver can earn at Pomona is 150, which includes a 20-point bonus for an NHRA elapsed time record, which the team set last year on Oct. 8 at 3.701 seconds at Maple Grove Raceway near Reading, Pa.

“We know Langdon has a good points lead, and he really has to mess up out there,” Brown said. “And we have to win the race and maybe set a record to catch him. We’ll give it our all and see where everything lands.”

Despite winning two titles in the past three Countdown events and finishing as the runner-up to Langdon in the other, Brown barely has made up ground on Langdon.

“All the hard work is finally paying off,” Brown said. “We just never quit even with all the struggles we went through in mid-season and starting the Countdown. The results have been showing that.

“We’ve just wanted to be able to go to Pomona and be able to contend for the championship.”

And the Matco team will get that chance.

“It’s hard to go out there and predict what another team will do; it’s Langdon’s championship to lose right now. We’d like to go out there and be the spoiler.”

And to the spoiler would go the championship.