Antron Brown news 2010-01-10

ANTRON BROWN AND MATCO TOOLS TOP FUEL TEAM TO BEGIN 2010 NHRA SEASON AT PALM BEACH INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY CLOSED TEST SESSION

JUPITER, Fla. (Jan. 10, 2010) - Following a career-best season in 2009, 24-time NHRA winner Antron Brown looks to add one more accomplishment to his already impressive resume, an NHRA championship. The Matco Tools flagship driver will begin working towards that goal when his Don Schumacher-owned Matco Tools Top Fuel team begins its preparation for the 2010 NHRA season, Jan. 11-15, at Palm Beach International Raceway in South Florida.

All six Don Schumacher Racing professional nitro teams will take part in the five-day closed test session at P.B.I.R. The test will include five NHRA teams and will be the first time that NHRA teams hit the track in 2010. The 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series season begins, Feb. 11-14, at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona with the 50th running of the historic Winternationals.

"Our DSR Matco Tools team couldn't be more excited to get to the track in Florida," Brown said. "To say we're itching to fire up our Matco Tools dragster and smell some nitromethane is an understatement. After the season that we had in '09 and finishing the year with a win at Pomona (Calif.) and now with all the resource we have here at DSR, we're ready to bring the championship home for Matco Tools and all the Matco distributors."

"Our number one goal is to shake down this new race car and get it down the track," crew chief Brian Corradi said. "We have five or six things we want to test and try that we didn't get to last season and we'll work on that too. Even though it was a short off season, we have to get everyone back into the groove of things for Pomona so we can come out swinging at the Winternationals."

Brown is the only racer in NHRA history to win races and lead the standings in both Top Fuel and Pro Stock Motorcycle. The former college track star raced his Brian Corradi/Mark Oswald-tuned dragster to a category-best six wins en route to a third place finish in the Countdown to 1 in 2009. He also earned seven No. 1 qualifying awards and has 21 career poles. The popular driver made NHRA history becoming just the seventh professional driver to sweep the Western Swing at Denver, Seattle and Sonoma, Calif.

"Last year was an awesome year for our team, but we came up short in the Countdown (to 1)," Brown said. "We made some mistakes, but we learned from those issues and that adversity will make our team stronger. We accomplished a lot, but we can't look back on that. We have to focus on 2010. Our team has been pouring in all the long hours this winter at our DSR shop in Brownsburg (Ind.) and we're confident all that hard work will pay off with great success."

-source: dsr