After qualifying seventh for the second straight race at 3.898-seconds on Friday at Bristol Dragway, Brown edged Texan Troy Buff, the No. 10 qualifier, before falling to 17-time winner Brandon Bernstein in the second round. Brown now ranks second in the NHRA Top Fuel standings. He trails six-time series champion Tony Schumacher by 45 points.

Squaring off against Buff for the third time, Brown got the jump at the start to score the wire-to-wire victory in the Matco Tools dragster. The 16-time Pro Stock Motorcycle winner used a tune-up from crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald to power the Matco-backed rail to the fastest 1,000-foot speed in NHRA history, 3.838 seconds at 319.75 mph. Brown is now 3-0 against Buff. Brown clocked his previous personal-best speed two weeks ago in the final round at the St. Louis NHRA race at 318.02 mph.

Brown was matched up against the Budweiser car for the fifth time in eight races. Bernstein used the best reaction time of the round, .022 of-a-second, while Brown raced the bright blue Matco Tools car to a performance of 3.873 at 315.86, the fastest speed of the round. However, the Rob Flynn-tuned rail clocked a lap of 3.862 at 304.25 to score the win in the left lane at Bristol Dragway for Bernstein. Brown is now 3-2 against Bernstein this season. The Matco Tools flagship driver has 274 career round wins. He has a mark of 17-6 in eight races this season.

"Our car is on point and we learned a lot this weekend," Brown said. "We worked on our hot weather tune-up in qualifying. I'm not disappointed at all. The car is running phenomenal and I'm just going to dig deep and work even harder and get ready for our next race at Topeka and we're going to come out swinging hard. The way we're racing, we know we have a shot to win every race."

The next NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racinbg Series event is the 21st annual O'Reilly Summer Nationals, May 29-31, at Heartland Park Topeka in Topeka, Kan. Last year at Topeka, Brown made his first career start at Heartland Park and qualified fourth at 4.584 seconds at 292.77 mph and raced to a semifinal finish.

Headquartered in Brownsburg, Ind., Mike Ashley Racing fields the Matco Tools Top Fuel dragster driven by Antron Brown. MAR proudly represents racing partners Matco Tools, Lend America, DirecTV, BeepBeep.com, Toyota, DataDot USA, Ringer's Gloves, Go Fast Sports, Goodyear, FRAM, Autolite, Suzuki, Connexions Sports and Entertainment, and Forward Sports Marketing.

Mike Ashley Racing supports Autism Awareness through their support of the Hyperbaric Therapy Center. A 2007 Centers for Disease Control report found that 1 in 150 children in America today have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and an estimated 1.5 million Americans and their families are now affected. Autism is a national health crisis, and Mike Ashley Racing is working to help educate the public about ways they can get involved. Visit the Heal Autism Now website for more information about how you can get involved at www.healautismnow.org.

R1 BROWN (.074) 3.838 ET, 319.75 MPH def. Buff (.087) 3.902 ET, 295.98 MPH
R2 Bernstein (.022) 3.862 ET, 304.25 MPH def. BROWN (.069) 3.873 ET, 315.86 MPH

Courtesy of Ted Yerzyk