Antron Brown improved his qualifying positon on Friday afternoon at the season-opening Winternationals by powering his Don Schumacher-owned Matco Tools dragster to the provisional No. 7 qualifying position. The Matco Tools flagship driver clocked an elapsed time of 3.869-seconds on Friday afternoon at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona
After shaking the tires on Thursday’s opening qualifying attempt at the 50th annual Winternationals, the Matco Tools/U.S. Army team was looking for a solid run on its brand new DSR chassis. Brown used a tune-up from crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald to power the Matco/Valvoline car to a pass of 3.869 seconds at 313.73 mph to complete the first full pass on the new chassis. That moved Brown to seventh in the 16-car order. Brown’s DSR teammates Cory McClenathan (FRAM) moved to second at 3.809-seconds, while Tony Schumacher (U.S. Army) improved to the No. 4 position at 3.835.
“That was good,” Brown said. “We really needed to just go down the race track with our Matco Tools car. We were just weak on Thursday and Mark (Oswald) and Brian (Corradi) made the right adjustments and we went right down through there. It was a nice, clean pass and we’re happy with that. That gives us a good baseline to improve from on Saturday.”
Professional nitro qualifying is scheduled for Noon and 3:30 p.m. (PT) on Saturday with Funny Car followed by Top Fuel at Pomona. Brown has earned the No. 1 qualifying award at the Winternationals the last two seasons and collected seven poles last season, second best in Top Fuel.
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