Antron Brown set to make a move at Phoenix

BROWN SET FOR COUNTDOWN SECOND HALF BEGINNING AT NHRA ARIZONA NATIONALS

Antron Brown

Photo by: Ted Rossino

CHANDLER, Ariz., October 10, 2011 – Aboard his Matco Tools Top Fuel dragster, Antron Brown heads here for this weekend’s 27th-annual NHRA Arizona Nationals at Firebird International Raceway determined to tighten up the top of the NHRA Full Throttle Countdown to the Championship.

According to the 35-year-old Don Schumacher Racing driver the approach to the final three – of the six – Countdown races will mirror how the Matco Tools team approaches the three-race mid-summer Western Swing.

“We’ll go out there with a game plan for the three races like it’s the Western Swing,” he said about events here, Las Vegas and the season finale outside Los Angeles. “Like the Swing, we’ll see some hot tracks and some cool ones. We’ve freshened all of our stuff since (last week’s) Reading race, put on some new equipment and now we are ready to rock and roll!

“I’ve never been so focused before. I feel really good – I’ve felt really good the whole last half of the season.”

Brown trails DSR teammate Spencer Massey, Reading winner, by 65 points, while remaining ahead of Del Worsham, Larry Dixon and DSR teammate Tony Schumacher.

“We’re still right there,” said the Matco Tools/U.S. Army driver. “We want to into the final round in Pomona with a chance; we want to be either in the points lead or within 20 points. It’s going to be a tough deal down to the finish.

“As we’ve seen, you can lose or pick up three rounds – that’s 60 points – in one race, so Spencer’s lead is not insurmountable.”

This weekend, an unusual early autumn date for a race normally set in the winter, brings many variables for the Top Fuel tuners.

“This is anybody’s race,” explained Brown. “We’ll have a ‘green’ surface (completely repaved since the last national event in February 2010) and the forecast calls for extreme heat, like we had a couple of races ago in Dallas.

“Mark and Brian (Oswald and Corradi, co-crew chiefs) will attack it like they do all others and I have nothing but confidence in their ability to figure it out.”