Antron Brown Motorsports is heading to the NHRA season finale at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip with more than a championship weekend on its mind. The team will arrive in Pomona after Angelle Sampey’s mother, Abigail Sampey, died from injuries she suffered when she was struck by a motorist during an afternoon walk.
The timing gives the finale its weight. Two weeks before Pomona, the team announced a contract extension with Matco Tools, and Brown’s Matco Tools Top Fuel dragster will carry a custom wrap promoting Matco’s new REX 2.0 Impact Wrench. Brown also enters the weekend coming off a season in which he became the first driver outside the Kalitta Motorsports camp to win two Top Fuel events, a marker that has helped put Antron Brown Motorsports back in the center of the category.
Sampey’s role in the weekend makes the story sharper. After the NHRA Las Vegas Nationals, she earned her Top Fuel license with a final 3.68-second run at 337 mph, then prepared to climb back into competition in Top Alcohol Dragster behind the wheel of the Hangsterfer’s FVP Mission Foods A/Fuel Dragster. She qualified 16th in Las Vegas and lost to Melanie Johnson in the opening round, but the bigger step was clearing the licensing hurdle after years of moving from motorcycles toward Top Fuel.
Pomona matters to Sampey for another reason. She won Pro Stock Motorcycle titles at the season-ending event there in 2001 and 2004, so the track already carries a long memory for her. Now she returns with a different machine, a new license and a family loss that arrived just as the season closed in on its final stop.
Brown said the team is ready to race in Pomona, but that it will do so with heavy hearts after the passing of Angelle Sampey’s mother. Sampey said she will race with an extra heavy heart and still wants to take home a Diamond Wally, adding that the last week has been incredibly tough even if the racetrack still feels like home. The weekend now asks her to do both at once: race into the final event of the year and carry grief in the same run.
What happens next is simple and difficult at the same time. Antron Brown Motorsports will race the NHRA season finale in Pomona, Brown’s car will debut its new Matco Tools wrap, and Sampey will try to turn a hard week into one more clean pass on a track that has already marked two of the biggest wins of her career.
