Antron Brown raced to his sixth Top Fuel victory of the season Sunday at the AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals at Gateway Motorsports Park, and in the process, increased his championship points lead. Jack Beckman (Funny Car), Erica Enders (Pro Stock), and Eddie Krawiec (Pro Stock Motorcycle) also were winners of the event, the first race for NHRA in the St. Louis area in more than two years. Brown defeated championship rival Spencer Massey in the final round and moved 21 points ahead of the Texas driver with only three races remain in the Full Throttle Countdown to the Championship playoffs. Brown, who battled side-by-side with Massey all weekend, took the victory with a final-round performance of 3.766 seconds at 325.22 mph in his Matco Tools/Aaron’s dragster while Massey trailed with a 3.812 at 324.05 in his FRAM/Prestone dragster. “Our team hit a grand slam here this weekend,” Brown said. “We qualified No. 1 and took it one round at a time. It was a great weekend, but it’s always a struggle. This class is very competitive, and these guys aren’t playing anymore. You have your struggles here and there, and you have to keep on overcoming them. I’m just so happy for our Aaron’s/Matco guys.” Brown beat Bruce Litton, Steve Torrence, and Brandon Bernstein in early rounds before unleashing his quickest run of the day in the final against Massey. “It was a stressful day where we matched up against some great competition,” Brown said. “Matching up against my teammate [Massey] in the final was big — we’ve been back and forth in the points. It’s great to have six wins, but right now, they’re all in the past. We need to go back to the shop and get focused on these last three races. It’s just so competitive out here, and this points race is going to go down to the last race.” For more on this story, please visit www.nhra.com.
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