TOP FUEL

Larry Dixon met Rit Pustari in the first round. Pustari started to shake the tires right off the starting line and was up in smoke by 300 feet.

Larry Dixon drove his Alan Johnson Al-Anabi Racing dragster past current points leader Antron Brown to grab his third win of the season. Dixon’s run of 4.553 seconds (no speed was recorded on the pass for Dixon) was enough to give him his fifth win at Englishtown and 46th of his career.

“We’ve had a lot of success at this race,” said Dixon. “The race used to be Father’s Day at Columbus, and we won out until they moved the Father’s Day to here. I was like, ‘Wow, I haven’t won Englishtown in a long time. It would be cool to do that,’ nonchalantly saying that at the beginning of the season. And then all of a sudden, you get to go to a bunch of finals and win here. This is a great track, and there’s so much history here. Racing on the same track as ‘Jungle’ and Garlits and Shirley and all my heroes that I grew up watching race is a great deal.”

With the win, Dixon was able to move past Top Fuel pilot Brandon Bernstein and take over the third spot, just 97 points behind leader Brown.

Antron Brown scored his 60th career Top Fuel round win by earning the wire-to-wire win over six-time Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher in the semifinals. Brown used the best reaction time of the round (.059 of-a-second) to power the bright blue Matco Tools dragster to a lap of 3.878 at 311.20 to advance to his 10th career Top Fuel final round. The Mike Green-tuned dragster trailed slightly after posting a pass of 3.905 at 296.89.

Brown is now 3-7 in 10 career races against Top Fuel's winningest driver. The win extended Brown's lead over Schumacher in the NHRA Top Fuel standings. Had Schumacher won the match, he would have regained the top spot in the standings by six points.

"That was a huge round for our team," Brown said. "Mike Green and that U.S. Army team put down that great (3).90 and our team with Brian (Corradi) and Mark (Oswald) ran that 3.87. That was low of the round. It was an awesome race. I was very confident going into the final round."

Facing off against the daunting Al-Anabi Racing team for the first time this season, Brown earned a runner-up finish in the Matco Tools/Lend America car after the 20-time NHRA winner fouled at the start. It was Brown's first career Top Fuel red light. Brown is now 3-4 in seven career races against Dixon. It is Brown's 23rd career runner-up finish.

“That was some good side-by-side racing,” said six-time world champion Tony Schumacher of his semifinal match with Brown. “It seemed like we were good to go until just past half track when the tires started spinning and the car started to move around. I’m sure that scrubbed off a little time. Even though we didn’t get the win here, we still managed to make a lot of progress relative to performance. I believe we’ve got a solid combination right now. I’m looking for that to translate into some wins real soon.”