Antron Brown, who leads the NHRA Top Fuel standings, raced his Mike Ashley-owned Matco Tools dragster to the provisional No. 6 qualifying position at Gainesville Raceway with an elapsed time of 3.946-seconds.
The most recent winner on the NHRA tour (Feb. 22 in Chandler, Ariz. ), Brown opened qualifying at the historic Gatornationals with a lap of 4.428 seconds at 184.67 mph. It was the eighth quickest run of the first of four secheduled qualifying sessions for the 40th annual ACDelco Gatornationals. On Friday’s second qualifying attempt, Brown used a tune-up from crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald to cruise the bright blue Matco Tools rail to the provisional No. 6 qualifying position with a lap of 3.946 at 302.89. It was the fifth quickest run of the session. There are 19 Top Fuel dragsters attempting to make the 16-car field for this weekend’s race.
“This hot sun feels good here at Gainesville, but it didn’t make for good track conditions on Friday,” Brown said. “We kind of had to tip-toe our way down the track today, but we ran that 3.94 and got this Matco dragster solidly into the show. Now we can throw it down on Saturday and go for that No. 1 spot.”
“This track here at Gainesville, for some reason, doesn’t react the same as other tracks like Phoenix or Indy when the track temperature is the same,” Corradi added. “I don’t know if it’s the sun angle or barometer or what, but we thought we could run better on that first run. We came back and backed it down a little and got down through there with the 3.94.”
Professional nitro qualifying resumes on Saturday afternoon at the historic Florida track at 12:30 and 3:30 p. m. (ET) with Top Fuel followed by Funny Car. Brown, who made his professional debut at the 1998 NHRA Gatornationals, qualified fourth at the Gatornationals last March. He earned the Pro Stock Motorcycle pole at the Gainesville NHRA race in 2001.
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