NSSN Correspondent

Antron Brown unbuckled himself and popped up from the seat of his sleek, skinny Matco Tools Dragster at the top end of Houston Raceway Park less than two weeks ago, peeled off his helmet and began chattering.
With racing soulmate Angelle Sampey waiting to greet him, along with a few of his former Pro Stock Motorcycle competitors, he squealed, “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe I won! I’m speechless!”
Antron Brown rarely is speechless. However, at the moment, most of the talk is not from him, but about him.
In his first NHRA Top Fuel race at the Winternationals in February, Brown, who was making the transition from motorcycles to 7,000-horsepower dragsters, was the No. 1 qualifier. Then at Houston, the fourth race on the POWERade Drag Racing Series schedule, Brown mowed down Doug Foley, Cory McClenathan, Doug Kalitta and Larry Dixon to win the O’Reilly Spring Nationals.
“You want to shine. You want to make the whole team shine, because that’s what they’re capable of,” Brown said with a nod to team owners David Powers and Tim Buckley and crew chief Lee Beard.
What makes his achievement more impressive is that atypical move from a 70-inch wheelbase, 600-pound Suzuki to a 300-inch long, nitromethane-powered beast that weighs more than a ton and leaves the starting line with a force nearly five times that of gravity.
“The transition has been mind-boggling. The Suzuki motorcycle and the car have very few things in common,” Brown said. “There isn’t anything that can prepare you for driving a Top Fuel car. 
“The motorcycle helped most by causing me to be smooth,” he said. “It’s very sensitive and you have to feel things on the race track. When the dragster shakes the tires and does things, it helped with that. It didn’t help with the ride in a Top Fuel dragster. I went to Frank Hawley’s (drag racing) school and got my Top Alcohol Dragster license and thought that would prepare me. When I sat in the Matco Tools missile, I found out I was in a totally different time zone.”
Brown’s playful personality leaped out when he tried to describe how it feels to accelerate from zero to 100 miles per hour in less than eight-tenths of a second and blast a quarter-mile in less than five seconds.

ANTRON BROWN Car: Matco Tools dragster Team: David Power Motorsports Crew chief: Lee Beard Hometown: Chesterfield, N.J. Family: Wife Billie Jo; children Arianna Celeste, Anson and Adler Stats • Debuted in Pro Stock Motorcycle at Gainesville in 1998 • Switched to Top Fuel this season • Has 16 Pro Stock Motorcyle wins in 33 final round appearances • Was the No. 1 qualifier in his Top Fuel debut (Pomona) • Captured first Top Fuel final round victory in fourth event (Houston) • Has 7-3 round record in four events this season and sits third in Top Fuel points • Is the first former Pro Stock Motorcycle competitor to win a Top Fuel event

“You can’t explain it. It’s a feeling you cannot imagine,” he said. “You go through this little vibration feel. It tickles your booty a little bit and all of a sudden the thing hits like Star Trek through the warp drive. You see the streaks on the side of your helmet. And man, before you know it, you’re coming through the finish line, hitting them ’chutes. It is an unbelievable sensation.”
Indeed, it would be quite a contrast from a seven-second pass on a gas-powered two-wheeler. But Brown saw one advantage to having raced against the likes of three-time bike champions Angelle Sampey and Andrew Hines.
“The biggest asset of the bikes was the tough competition. That helped prepare me for all the great drivers in Top Fuel that I now have to race against,” he said. “The Bernsteins, the Schumachers, the Kalittas, the Prudhommes  — those guys are out here to cut your throat.”
Overall, though, he said, “There’s not a lot that translates over, but what it boils down to is how determined you are to win and your desire to race. I’ll always have a great desire to race. And I’m at the top of the heap with all these boys out here, and I’ve got one of the best ringleaders on my side right now.”
That would be Hot Rod Fuller, who pushed five-time champ Tony Schumacher to his farthest limits last season.
“I owe a lot to Hot Rod Fuller. I think of him as the best in the business,” he said. “He’s sharp on the tree, gets the car down the groove, keeps it where it needs to be, and he’s aggressive. That’s how I want to be. I want to learn all the right motions out here and do everything consistent and right. I want to follow in his footsteps. If I can do that, we can get both of these cars in The Countdown this year and do some damage.”
Brown credited Fuller and Beard. “Without Hot Rod and Lee Beard, I wouldn’t have advanced as quickly as I have,” he said without hesitation.
Beard, he said, “is a very talented individual. He's meticulous and lives up to his motto: It’s all about the details. He’s very good at coaching you. He works with positive motivation. It’s more than just a race team here; it’s more like a family.” Just the same, he said, he understands that “we’re out here to race. We’re out here to win.”
Beard compared Brown to 1989 Top Fuel champion Gary Ormsby.
“What I see in Antron Brown is an individual that is willing to give 110 percent to do whatever it takes to be successful out here in NHRA drag racing,” said Beard, who has an intense, almost obsessive, focus. “What it takes to be successful today in racing is the total package, and we feel Antron brings that to the table.”
Among Brown’s traits, Beard likes the driver’s “willingness to work at the shop and really learn about the race car,” as well as his “enthusiastic and outgoing personality.”
All that served Brown well when he raced motorcycles, most recently for Don Schumacher and his U.S. Army sponsor. Just around the corner and down the street from his current David Powers Motorsports digs in Brownsburg, Ind., Brown was always a presence at the DSR shop, yakking with equally zealous crew chief Steve Tartaglia.
Even with Brown’s limited experience in a dragster, Fuller knew before the start of the season that they would be compatible teammates. “He can be my enforcer,” Fuller said. “Kalitta, Schumacher, Dixon, Bernstein, and all them boys had better watch out.”
Brown played along: “That’s right,’cause me and Hot Rod, we might not be the tallest ones out there, but we’ll hit ’em low. We’ll hit ’em hard.”
The NHRA lists Fuller’s height at 5 foot, 5 inches and Brown’s as 5’8”. But that’s not all Brown will poke fun at in his stand-up shtick. Alluding to the Paul McCartney-Stevie Wonder 1982 chart-topper, Brown calls himself and Fuller “Ebony and Ivory,” saying, “We make perfect harmony together, trust me.
“But we want all the females out there to definitely know that we’re not gay! I have a wife,” said the father of four, whose youngest, son Adler, was born last month, one week after Brown’s 32nd birthday. “And Hot Rod, he definitely has the hot females, trust me. The ladies love Hot Rod. So, if I beat him in a final round, I’d make him do a strip tease for all the ladies in the winner’s circle. If we both get in the final round, this team wins anyway.”
Clearly, Brown is comfortable with who and what he is, which is one of two African-American Top Fuel drivers. He and the other, J.R. Todd, held up signs at one race. Said Todd’s: “I’m not Antron.” Brown’s declared: “I’m not J.R. I’m dark chocolate.”
In his championship pursuit that lasted until Schumacher won the title on the final run of the season for the second-straight year, Fuller repeatedly called himself “The Little Engine That Could.” Brown, who said, “This is one big happy family at David Powers Motorsports,” had his own twist on that: “As long as we have this good-karma train going, the sky’s the limit.”
Good-karma train? How about some “Soul Train?” How about singing a few bars of “Ebony and Ivory”? Offered Fuller, “Maybe ‘American Idol’ will pick us up.”
Brown declined.
“I’m not no singer. That’s why I drag race,” Brown said.
His fans will simply have to enjoy that “perfect harmony.”