Drag racing’s Antron Brown again seeks first NHRA top-fuel title
With two races left in the season, Antron Brown again is poised to win his first title in the NHRA’s elite top-fuel division.
But Brown will have to hold off off his teammate, Spencer Massey, to win the championship in the National Hot Rod Assn.’s Full Throttle Series.
“We’ve got to keep attacking,” Brown told reporters on a conference call Wednesday. “There’s a lot of racing to go.”
Brown is atop the title standings with a 104-point lead over Massey -- a sizable but not insurmountable lead -- entering the final two races in Las Vegas on Oct. 25-28 and in Pomona for the season finale Nov. 8-11.
Should Brown prevail, he would become the first African American to win the championship in top fuel, where the dragsters reach speeds topping 300 mph in less than five seconds.
A year ago, Massey arrived at the finals in Pomona with a two-point lead over Del Worsham and Brown was only 14 points back. But Worsham captured the championship.
Massey, who like Brown drives for the team of Don Schumacher Racing, acknowledged on the conference call that “it’s going to be tough” to catch Brown this year but that “it’s nothing I’m going to totally concede.”
Brown, 36, has a series-high six wins this season; Massey is next with four.
In drag racing’s other premier class, funny cars, Jack Beckman has a 23-point lead over Ron Capps with two races left.
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