{"id":50913,"date":"2018-04-23T13:49:20","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T20:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=50913"},"modified":"2018-08-16T12:26:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T19:26:15","slug":"browns-nhra-houston-return-not-what-he-was-looking-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/browns-nhra-houston-return-not-what-he-was-looking-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Brown’s NHRA Houston Return Not What He Was Looking For"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brown's<\/p>\n

NHRA\u2019s Spring Nationals at Royal Purple Raceway has always been a special place for three-time Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Top Fuel champion Antron Brown. Although he didn\u2019t start racing nitro cars until walking away from a successful, 16-win Pro Stock Motorcycle career, New Jersey-born Brown has a soft spot in his heart for this Baytown, Texas racetrack.<\/p>\n

The Houston-adjacent track is the site of Brown\u2019s first Top Fuel victory 10 years ago, where he drove his Matco Tools\/Toyota dragster through to the finals and into the history books in his fourth dragster contest. Brown returned to this track looking to become just the fourth racer in NHRA history to secure 50 Top Fuel victories. The other three are his teammate Tony Schumacher, Larry Dixon and Joe Amato.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, one could consider this 2018 NHRA season a slow start for Brown and his Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) team, as they\u2019ve advanced to three semi-finals in the season\u2019s first four events, yet failed to gain victory in any one of them thus far. Houston could have been their turnaround after Brown claimed a fifth qualifying spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cHouston has always been a great place to race,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s an old-school, big-time race track and the Houston area is a hotbed for our sport. There\u2019s so much history to this track. I remember 2008 like it was yesterday,\u201d he recalled. \u201cIt was David Powers\u2019 hometown track and we got our first Top Fuel win there in just our fourth race together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown moved from two- to four-wheeled competition after the 2007 season, when team owner Don Schumacher looked to shutter his Pro Stock Motorcycle team. Powers was Browns\u2019 original TF team owner, but stewardship of his dragster moved around several times until he became a valued member, a second time, of the DSR squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a phenomenal deal,\u201d Brown recalled his first victory. \u201cThat was the start of the legacy for our Matco\/U.S. Army\/Toyota team. It\u2019s a combination that\u2019s been together a long time. Now we\u2019ve won three championships and competed for a championship every year in the Top Fuel ranks. We have an incredible team at DSR.<\/p>\n

\"Brown's<\/p>\n

\u201cHouston always sticks out to me because it\u2019s where I was able to live out my dream and win in a Top Fuel car. I never imagined all of this back in 2008.\u201d This was even though Brown originally had the tutelage of master tuner Lee Beard. \u201cIt\u2019s far more than I ever dreamed. I\u2019ve been very fortunate, very blessed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In 2017, DSR doubled up by winning in both Top Fuel and Funny Car at Royal Purple Raceway. Leah Pritchett earned the TF win while 2016 Funny Car champion Ron Capps took the Wally winner\u2019s trophy in his category. This year the DSR team went home empty-handed as John Force Racing\u2019s Brittany Force took the Top Fuel title and Kalitta Motorsports\u2019 J.R. Todd earned his second consecutive Funny Car Wally trophy.<\/p>\n

For Brown, this race in Houston didn\u2019t go the way he wanted as he dropped a first-round match-up against eventual runner-up Terry McMillen. \u201cIt was just one of those mishaps where we went out there and dropped a hole early. That made the engine weak and we had tire shake,\u201d Brown explained. \u201cWe were on a good run and would have ended with a good pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were pressing and weren\u2019t taking Terry lightly. With that being said, we just need to remain poised and keep working hard. It\u2019s still early in the season.\u201d This is Brown\u2019s first Round 1 exit in 2018. \u201cFortunately, championships are won in the last six races and not the first six.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown gets another opportunity to win No. 50 at zMax Dragway this week, site of the original NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals. It is race No. 6 on the season and the second race in a threesome on consecutive weekends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NHRA\u2019s Spring Nationals at Royal Purple Raceway has always been a special place for three-time Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Top Fuel champion Antron Brown.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":50914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[5614,82,574,41,7,1632],"class_list":["post-50913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-antron-brown","tag-don-schumacher-racing","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/633419078701762.BHYGzIzx9bU8Cn6dQrLs_height640-min.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-dfb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50916,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50913\/revisions\/50916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}