POMONA – Top Fuel driver Antron Brown made quite a comeback in the Mission Foods NHRA Drag Racing Series Finals at Pomona Dragstrip on Sunday.
He beat Doug Kalitta in Top Fuel at the 59th In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals for the 80th victory of his career.
Brown celebrated winning the Top Fuel final and the Top Fuel championship on the same day putting an exclamation point on a season full of adversity.
“Brother is broke,” Brown said. “I ain’t broke no more. We are going to have a good Christmas this year.”
Brown clinched his fourth Top Fuel championship when he beat Brittany Force in the semifinals. Force rattled her tires and lifted off the accelerator giving Brown an easy round win on his way to the championship race.
He won the Top Fuel championship in 2012, 2015 and 2016. It was his first NHRA championship as a team owner with AB Motorsports.
“This team has been resilient, never quit, never stopped,” Brown said. “It’s been incredible, truly a blessing. I can’t believe we did it.”
A plane crash at the drag strip interrupted racing for about two hours at the NHRA Finals in Pomona. A small plane crashed into RVs and trucks at the south end of the track where the family of driver Ron Capps was staying for the weekend. Spectators were also staying in the RV area. The crash happened during the first round of Top Fuel eliminations at 11:10 a.m.
Four people were injured, two in critical condition, in the crash and taken to hospitals. The NHRA race cars were removed from the drag strip while firefighters and police responded to the crash.
When racing resumed at around 1 p.m., Brown defeated Justin Ashley and kept his Top Fuel championship hopes alive. Brown was in third place and 46 points behind Ashley for the lead in Top Fuel when eliminations started. Shawn Langdon was in second place, 43 points behind Ashley. Brown and Langdon advanced to the second round and raced each other.
Brown took the lead in the Top Fuel standings when he defeated Langdon. There was a little luck involved when Brown spun his tires on his run, but Langdon’s car sputtered down the track and lost power.
Brown crossed the finish line first, but it was a 5.031-second run. Brown avoided making the same mistakes in the semifinal and final.
“We left it all out on the race track,” Brown said, “It’s unreal. It’s just a heck of a race day, it was a heck of a show.”
Jack Beckman beat his John Force Racing teammate Austin Prock in the Funny Car final. Prock was denied a fairy tale ending to his season, but it was a small price to pay for winning his first NHRA Funny Car championship.
Prock wanted to wait until he had the trophy for winning the NHRA Funny Car championship in his hands before celebrating.
He came into the NHRA Finals in Pomona guaranteed to win his first Funny Car title and he had plenty of reasons to celebrate.
The driver for John Force Racing set the track record in qualifying and was the No. 1 qualifier for Sunday’s Funny Car finals.
In the first round of eliminations, Prock became the first Funny Car driver to break the 340 mph barrier. He beat Jason Rupert and posted a run of 3.828 seconds at 341.68 mph.
But he wasn’t the official champion until after qualifying was completed on Saturday. That didn’t stop the congratulations from rolling in though.
“I appreciate all the congratulatory messages but the job wasn’t finished. I said all year the trophy’s gotta be in our hands then it’s over,” Prock said.
“It’s over. The job is finished.”
Prock won the Funny Car championship in record-breaking fashion. He was the No. 1 qualifier in Funny Car a record 15 times, breaking the mark of 13 set by John Force in 1996.
Prock is no stranger to NHRA drag racing even though it was his first season in Funny Car. He competed in 70 NHRA Top Fuel races over five seasons, and won four of them. He was the Top Fuel Rookie of the Year in 2019.
He won eight races, including three in the Countdown to the Championship playoffs, in his first season in Funny Car.
“It’s what we had in mind. You always come into a race season going you want to win every race, you want to be low ET every run. To put that into reality is really tough,” Prock said. “Everyone on the team just did an outstanding job. We all kept our heads down through the good moments, the bad moments. That’s what it takes to be a champion. That’s what it takes to win races.”
Top Fuel driver Brittany Force, Prock’s teammate, said he paid his dues and was rewarded with a championship.
“He worked so hard. He worked on Courtney’s car back in 2018. He was on my car a couple of years later in a Top Fuel car as a teammate. He lost his ride for a little bit. It’s been up and down for him as well. To not have that security is difficult,” Force said.
Courtney Force is Brittany Force’s sister and was an NHRA driver but has since retired from racing.
Greg Anderson chased down Dallas Glenn in the NHRA Pro Stock final and Aaron Stanfield in the Pro Stock standings.
Anderson won the Pro Stock final over Glenn and won the Pro Stock championship, the sixth of his career. The winner of the final race was also going to win the championship. But they both had to catch Stanfield on the final day of the season.
Stanfield was 29 points ahead of Glenn and 48 ahead of Anderson when elimination rounds began.
Anderson was the No. 1 qualifier in Pro Stock after a run of 6.505 seconds at 211.20 mph. Glenn was second at 6.512 seconds and 207.82 mph. Stanfield was fourth in qualifying at 6.517 seconds and 209.98 mph.
Matt Smith won the Pro Stock Motorcycle final over Gaige Herrera.
Herrera won the Pro Stock Motorcycle championship for the second year in a row when he defeated Clayton Howie in the first round of eliminations.
He had a 123-point lead over Smith, the No. 1 qualifier in Pro Stock Motorcycle, when eliminations started. Richard Gadson was in third place, eight points behind Smith.
Herrera was the third-fastest qualifier at 6.765 seconds and 201.22 mph.