ANTRON
BROWN
A
n t r o n
Brown waltzes into the main entrance of Don
Schumacher Racing’s immaculate Brownsburg,
Indiana-based race shop, bringing with him an
unmistakable energy that’s turned the former
Pro Stock Motorcycle phenom into one of pro-
fessional drag racing’s biggest stars. He greets
the receptionist, asks how her day is going, then
checks in with his publicist before we settle on a
vacant board room, where we’ll spend the next
hour talking about drag racing.
The beaming smile on Brown’s face is replaced
with a look of concern as we sit down at the table
where numerous high-dollar sponsorship deals
have been pitched and signed. Something is clear-
ly on his mind. “Let me show you something,” he
says as he pulls up a recent Seattle Times piece
about the driver of the Matco Tools Top Fuel
dragster on his iPhone. “This story says I have a
438-117 record in head-to-head competition—a
winning percentage of 71.2—I never realized that
until one of our sponsors at Toyota Racing showed
me this article.”
The story goes on to say Brown’s winning per-
centage is higher than peers like DSR teammate
Tony Schumacher (67.7 percent) and 16-time
Funny Car World Champion John Force, who’s
amassed a winning percentage of 69.6 over a
decades-long career of head-to-head drag rac-
ing. Brown isn’t sharing the article to show off
or brag about his accomplishments. He’s using it
to provide context to a question he’s increasingly
asked by sponsors and friends: “Why aren’t you
being nominated for Driver of the Year honors?”
“It’s one of those questions that’s baffled me,” he
admits. “I have sponsors that ask questions like,
‘Man, we figured you’d be nominated for this,’ or
‘Why didn’t your team get nominated for that?’.
And we don’t know. We just don’t know what
it takes to be recognized from that standpoint.
Driver of the Year is always one big award from
ESPN and the ESPYs, but there’s other awards
besides that, too. Our main focus right now is we
try not to look at things like that because one day
when we retire we can look back at all the stuff
we have done, our whole work together as a unit.
“As of now we’re just going to keep our heads
down and keep plugging and keep working hard.
Then maybe one day people will recognize what
we’ve done. Hopefully they don’t recognize it
when you’re five championships down the road,
you know what I mean? Right now, we’re working
70 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
on our fourth title and we’re working hard at it.
That’s going to be our focus right now.”
B
rown grew up on his grand-
mother’s 10-acre farm in Chester-
field, New Jersey, a small Trenton
suburb where in 2016 a street was
named after the still-rising Top
Fuel star: Antron Brown Way.
He was exposed to drag racing at a young age,
going sportsman racing with his father, Albert,
and his uncle, Andre. By his senior year of high
school Brown was racing motorcycles on the local
drag strip.
“I distinctly remember eating, sleeping and
dreaming about drag racing,” says Brown, 41.
“I used to draw and doodle
dragsters when I was in
school. I wanted to race.
One person told me when
you eat, sleep and you dream
it, you don’t realize that you
become it, and I became
it probably when I was 10
years old. I just did every-
thing along the way to bring
me into that realm. I start-
ed off working on a team,
to testing motorcycles and
riding street bikes.”
Brown’s passion for
two-wheeled drag racing
continued in 1998 when
he entered the NHRA Pro
Stock Motorcycle ranks
with a bike owned by star
NFL cornerback Troy Vin-
cent. After joining the U.S.
Army team with teammate
Angelle Sampey in 2003,
Brown would earn 16 Pro
Stock Motorcycle victories
in 33 final rounds.
“Four years into racing Pro
Stock Motorcycle, I did the
Army deal; went through
basic training. When I got
out of that basic training—to make it short and
sweet—it taught me to believe in myself and that
you should never settle. It’s not that ‘I can’t;’ it’s
always ‘I will’ and ‘I can.’ Once I got that Army
motto in my mind and started to live that lifestyle,
that’s when I put my eyes on Top Fuel. Four years
later, after still plugging away while I was riding
bikes, I got to live the ultimate dream, and that
was to drive a Top Fuel car.”
Brown got the call t o move up to Top Fuel in
late 2007, taking over the seat of the Matco Tools
dragster fielded in 2008 by Texas businessman
David Powers. He raced to his first Top Fuel win
in just his fourth start, beating three-time world
champion Larry Dixon in the final round at Hous-
ton. The team later traded hands to Mike Ashley,
who hired former Funny Car driver Mark Oswald
and longtime Funny Car crew guy Brian Corradi
to tune the car. The trio stayed together when
Don Schumacher added the Matco Tools team to
his expanding stable of nitro entries late in 2009.
Brown and his “Matco
boys” have done excep-
tionally well during their
time racing together. Lead-
ing into this year’s NHRA
Countdown, his Top Fuel
credentials boast 49 event
wins, 38 low-qualifier
awards and three of the last
five NHRA Mello Yello Se-
ries world championships:
2012, 2015 and 2016.
The Matco team’s ability
to string together winning
passes—especially in the
crucial Countdown portion
of the season—has created
a unique situation for them.
Whenever they win a race,
they celebrate conservative-
ly and pack up. When they
finish the season as the
number-one team in drag
racing’s most elite category,
the achievement isn’t met
with overwhelming praise
from the media, no ESPY
award nominations or mag-
azine covers. It’s almost as if
a championship-level per-
formance is expected from
Brown and company, almost as if winning is just
business as usual.
One easily identifiable reason behind Brown
winning no less than six races per year since 2009
(excepting 2010 and 2013), has been the consis-
“As of now
we’re just
going to keep
our heads
down and keep
plugging and
keep working
hard. Then
maybe one
day people will
recognize what
we’ve done.”
Issue 124