Antron Brown, the defending event winner of the O’Reilly Spring Nationals, raced his Mike Ashley-owned Matco Tools dragster to the provisional No. 2 qualifying position Friday afternoon at Houston Raceway Park. Only one qualifying session was completed due to evening rain showers.
Brown, who enters the fourth race on the 24-race NHRA schedule atop the Top Fuel standings, made the most of Friday’s only qualifying attempt. The 19-time NHRA winner used a tune-up from crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald to blast the Matco Tools rail to the second quickest pass of the day with a lap of 3.912 seconds at 305.63 mph. Only Cory McClenathan, a 30-time Top Fuel winner, was quicker after driving his FRAM/Matco Tools dragster to a pass of 3.90-seconds. Shortly after Friday’s first qualifying session was completed, the skies opened forcing NHRA officials to cancel the rest of the day’s racing action.
“That was a really good run for the Matco team,” Brown said.“We’re having an awesome time here at Houston with great support from our Matco family here in town. Brian (Corradi) and Mark (Oswald) gave us a nice, smooth tune-up on that pass and we drove it down through there with that 3.91. We’ll take that. That gets us in the show and with the cooler temperatures on Saturday, we should be able to go a lot quicker.”
Professional nitro qualifying resumes on Saturday afternoon at Noon and 3:30 p. m. (CT) at the Baytown track. Top Fuel will run first followed by Funny Car. Brown qualified in the No. 12 position last March at the Houston race en route to winning his first career Top Fuel race when he edged Larry Dixon in the final round 4.605 to 4.621.
| 
|