Antron Brown, a 33-year-old native of Chesterfield, N.J., could become the first African-American to win a major N.H.R.A. championship. But he does not think of himself as much of a trail blazer. Shirley Muldowney won the N.H.R.A. top fuel championship when Brown was 2.
“She did it way back in the day when people said women should be in the kitchen,” Brown said during a recent N.H.R.A. event at Maple Grove Raceway. “Our sport never had a certain ethnicity.”
While he grew up around cars, Brown did not have family ties with the N.H.R.A., as did drivers like Brandon Bernstein, the son of the top fuel champion Kenny Bernstein, and Ashley Force Hood, the daughter of the funny car champion John Force. But Brown got big boosts in his career from relatives.
Mark Oswald, a former N.H.R.A. champion who is Brown’s other crew chief, said: “I’ve never seen anyone get as proficient that fast as he did. But Antron is such a natural and is so professional, he just seems to progress really fast.”
Brown practically grew up with a wrench in his hand. His father, Albert, and his uncle Andre were weekend warriors who raced on the sportsman level. The family went to race, and to watch, at drag strips at Maple Grove and at Atco and Englishtown, both in New Jersey.
Brown lived in Trenton until he was 6. When his grandfather died, his family moved to his grandmother’s 10-acre farm in Chesterfield, in the rural part of Burlington County. His father opened a septic-tank service, and Brown helped him repair bulldozers and dump trucks.
“He always had the mechanical skills and was always hands-on with cars,” Albert Brown said of his son. “As they say, the fruit doesn’t always fall far from the tree.”
Antron Brown loved nothing more than riding motorcycles on a course he built on the farm, but he also wanted to try what racers call stick-and-ball sports — football, basketball and track — in high school. He stood only 5 feet 6 inches, but he was fast and liked to play.
Brown won 5 of the first 15 events on the schedule this year, including three in a row, for a team now known as Mike Ashley Motorsports. At 5-8 and 150 pounds, Brown still looks as if he could sprint 100 meters in a good time. He plays basketball, races remote-control boats and rides dirt bikes.
Brown remembers how he started racing motorcycles when he was 4, not long after the training wheels of his bicycle were taken off. The thrill of the sport — the pursuit of brassy, unbridled speed — still percolates in him. Only the mode of transportation has changed.
“It’s the intensity, it’s the moment you get up on the starting line, and it’s us against them,” Brown said. “The team is trusting me to finish the job. I like that pressure.”
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