Antron Brown and his David Powers-owned Matco Tools Top Fuel team suffered a rare opening-round defeat Sunday morning at Pacific Raceways near Seattle. The 18-time NHRA winner remains second in the NHRA POWERade Top Fuel standings following 14 of 23 races this season.
After qualifying the Matco Tools dragster in the No. 3 position with an elapsed time of 3.831-seconds on Friday evening at Pacific Raceways, Brown was matched-up against No. 14 qualifier Bob Vandergriff, Jr. Brown, a two-time Top Fuel winner this season, used a slight starting line advantage in the Matco car, but the bright blue dragster spun the tires early in the run as Brown slowed to a performance of 6.784 seconds at 105.24 mph. Vandergriff sped his brown UPS dragster to a run of 4.229 at 269.19 to advance to the second round of eliminations. Brown is now 3-1 versus Vandergriff this season. It is just Brown’s second first-round exit in 14 races this season. He now has a round-record of 23-12 this season.
“We came here and maintained our spread from second to third place,” Brown said. “We’re never happy losing early, but our Matco Tools team isn’t down. We’re looking forward to going to Sonoma and back to Infineon Raceway. We ran well there in Pro Stock Motorcycle and want to run well there in Top Fuel next weekend.”
The next NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series event is the 21st annual FRAM-Autolite Nationals, July 25-27, at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. Brown is a two-time finalist at the Sonoma NHRA race. There are four races remaining until the Countdown to the Championship begins at the Charlotte race in September. Brown’s teammate, Rod Fuller, raced to a semifinal finish Sunday at the Seattle race and now ranks fourth in the NHRA standings.
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