Hello again all my friends. What a week it was. I couldn’t have been happier to be back in Kansas for my second visit to Heartland Park. The weather is right and tight for some good NHRA Drag Racing. Last year was my maiden voyage to Topeka, being my first year in Top Fuel. The bikes don’t race at Topeka, so all I knew of Heartland Park was from what I saw watching the races on ESPN2

We left home on Tuesday evening and flew to Tulsa. We had a Matco Tools vocational school display with our Matco Tools Top Fuel dragster on Wednesday at OSU Institute of Technology in Okmulgee. We do seven votech school visits each year, and it’s so great to have the opportunity to meet and greet the future mechanics and technicians of the world. I wanna thank my homie Michael Brown, a district manager with Matco, for the great hospitality in the Sooner State. Here is a group photo of Michael and a bunch of his Matco distributors who drove up four hours from Oklahoma to hang out with us for the weekend.

After the OSU visit, I hopped in the big rig with my boys Brad Mason and Wayne “Red” Waite and rode up to Topeka. The boys all ate dinner together once we got to the hotel. It’s good to get the team together away from the track and just kick it and cut up and relax and have a good time before the hectic race weekend begins. Thursday was a lazy day for the brothaman. I slept in and got caught up on my rest and then headed over to Dick’s Sporting Goods to get me some new Nike running shoes so I can stay in tip-top shape to take on all these young guns like Shawn and Spencer.

It’s cool driving into Heartland Park on Gary Ormsby Drive. Gary was and still is one of my racing idols and a great NHRA champion. He’s very missed by all of us. Friday was a really good day for our MAR Matco Tools team to throw down a 3.84. That was a really stellar run, and I couldn’t be any more proud of my guys. This is what makes racing so fun, is to have great teamwork and have it all come together at the perfect moment. I rolled back to the hotel with the boys, and since they did such a great job, I treated them to a quick run through the McDonald’s drive-thru for a late night snack. The brothaman was hungry after a long day at the track. I got to bed right after midnight and didn’t get to see any of the Lakers series-clinching win over the Nuggets.

I got to the room and cranked up the AC and cooled things off to about 62 degrees. I like it cold when I sleep, and my roomie for the weekend, Nick Corradi, the Corradi Kid, slept right and tight too. Nick is the oldest son of our crew chief Brian. Nick is 20 and goes to Toledo, so he’s hanging out with the team since he’s out of college for the summer. I didn’t hear even a peep from him all night long. The cold room means no snoring and a good nights sleep for old A.B.

We started things off on Saturday by doing a radio interview with the Racin’ Boys on WHB-AM 810 in Kansas City, then it was off to my racing duties, liking mixing fuel for the car and mingling with all our loyal Matco Tools distributors and guests and all the great fans at Heartland Park. We had a great turnout of Matco distributors and guests this weekend, and we just want to thank them all so very much for the great support for our race program here at MAR. All the fans, too. The fan turnout was awesome. This is a cool race because we meet people from Kansas and Iowa and Nebraska and Missouri and Oklahoma.

Let me tell you, Saturday was a tough day on the track. The track was the trickiest I’ve seen in a long time. When you walked on the track, the rubber was like bubble gum, so it’s really a tough challenge to maneuver these high-horsepower Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars down the track. We made that great run on Friday night but were just too aggressive on Saturday as our results showed. But we’re not alone. Only Spencer Massey and our Matco Tools teammate Clay Millican got down the track on Saturday. All the great tuning minds got things figured out because there was some awesome racing on Sunday. Let me tell you, I had a firsthand view of what it’s like to lose a really close race.

After we finished qualifying Saturday, we hit the shower and got revived and we headed across the street to Old Chicago to watch the Cavs/Magic game. It was a heartfelt game watching with my Cleveland boys, Brian Corradi and his son, Nick, but it was obvious the better team won the game and made it to the NBA Finals. I’ve got to commend Old Chicago, they have some kicking’ pizza. The Finals should be good with Kobe and Dwight Howard. That kid’s like me, always smiling.

We rolled to the track early on Sunday morning to take in the RFC chapel service with my good buddy Larry Smiley. Then it was off to our normal duties. I started mixing that nitromethane. Then it was time for the car warm-up. It was smooth as always. Then I went up into the driver/crew chief lounge, and I made like Superman and came back out with my bright blue Matco Tools Impact! Racing firesuit on. Then we slide over to the starting line for driver introductions, and we did the No. 1 qualifier speech with Bob Frey. If you didn’t see us in Sports Illustrated’s Pop Culture Grid last week, we called Bob NHRA Gossip Girl. LOL It was a heartfelt speech to all the Topeka fans, and they responded with a big applause for the brothaman. Topeka is one of the many great tracks we visit each year, and I’m glad to be competing at all 24 races so we can meet the great NHRA fans in each market.

We proceeded up to the line for our bye run and made the fourth-quickest lap of the round at 3.981-seconds. It was a good run for our MAR Matco team to get down the hot, slimy track at Heartland Park. After we struggled in qualifying in the heat, it was great to get down and make a good run. That gave us lane choice over Shawn “the Kid” Langdon in round two. Shawn is my top choice for rookie of the year. He’s doing an awesome job in that Lucas Oil car. If you don’t know Shawn, you will. I know him real well after Sunday. LOL He’s going to win some races this year.

We knew it would be a tough match-up against Shawn. The last time we raced them, at St. Louis when we won the race, we won a really close race. It was just the opposite this time. It was a great side-by-side again, Shawn ran a 4.034 to our 4.044, and we lost by three-thousandths of a second. It was a great drag race, but we were on the short end. The track was better than we anticipated. We’ll take our butt whopping like men and tip our caps to those boys over at Lucas Oil and move on to Chicago and do it all over again.

We got home for about a day, and now it’s time for Chicago. I’m loading up in the minivan with the fam and we’re driving up to the Windy City this morning. I’m going to do the press luncheon and some media work this afternoon and hit up the tool truck with my boy Tony Mores near Joliet on Thursday morning. Then we’ll definitely take in game one of the NBA Finals tomorrow night.

Just a few notes, we’re doing Twitter contests before each race, and you could win a 2009 Matco Tools dragster diecast or other cool items. Be sure to follow us a www.Twitter.com/MARnews. Also, the replica crew shirts of our awesome 2009 crew uniforms are on pre-order at www.antronbrown.com. They’re just like the shirts our Matco team wears, so make sure to buy them up and represent at the NHRA races.

Thanks for reading, and as always, love, peace and hair grease, and I’m out like shout.

God bless,

Antron