By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Sitting 12th in Top Fuel points at the start of the weekend is uncharted territory for three-time world champion and 68-time NHRA race winner Antron Brown.
But Brown, who launched AB Motorsports this season, said he's confident that it won't be long until the Matco Tools Top Fuel team returns to its accustomed place as a perennial title contender.
Three-time Top Fuel world champ Antron Brown has struggled this season, but sees much better days ahead for the Matco Tools team. {Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN
"The hardest part is I'm a very competitive person and not just me, but everybody that's on our team,'' Brown said Friday at Heartland Motorsports Park, where he is competing in the Menards NHRA Nationals. "Everybody on this Matco team, we show up to win all the time.
"The last year and a half we've been beat down, but we have never given up and the cool part is to see our hard work and our determination to get back to where we need to be.''
Brown, the 2017 race-winner and a four-time No. 1 qualifier in Topeka, said the biggest challenge this season has been on the performance side of things, but he is confident that that the team has made big strides in that department.
"On the performance side we took some bumps and bruises, but we started off with so much new stuff,'' Brown said. "We could have come out and purchased exactly what we ran in years prior, the tried and true, but it was time for us to elevate and go with all the new latest, greatest widgets and gadgets. It's been taking us awhile to figure it all out but now after the Western Swing we finally figured some things out and now we're not coming to a race trying to figure something out, we're working on a program to make it better.
"Last race we did good. We qualified in the top five, right where we wanted to, and we just didn't run quick enough first round. That was our fault, but our car was performing well enough where we actually ran second and third low of the round on Saturday, so we're getting right back to the realm that we used to do years ago. The thing about it is we learned a lot through all those struggles and now it feels good to see it come to fruition, all the hard work that we put in.''
Brown is hoping that progress will translate into success in the upcoming NHRA playoffs.
"The good part is that we're in a sport that's a playoff so you've got to make the Countdown to the Championship, which we're already going to be in, regardless,'' Brown said. "Any team's going to make it if they show up for all the races and the points are going to be re-set where we could come in ninth, eighth, seventh, 10th, but we're going to be within 100 points of the leaders .
"So with that being said, it's going to be anybody's race for six races and our main focus is to go into that and hit our stride -- qualify well and leave it all on the table, give it all we got.''
And Brown said the team's struggles will only make it stronger moving forward.
"The coolest part is through all the trials and tribulations it made us so much better and stronger,'' he said. "There were times when we were looking at each other cross-eyed, 'What is wrong, what is happening?' But then in the short term, we thought we were close, but we got even closer.
"We were always a family, but now our bond even goes deeper and I'm looking forward now because the tide is turning and the good times are about to start rolling.''
