Story By: ROB GOODMAN / KALITTA MOTORSPORTS – YPSILANTI, MI – Shawn Langdon enters the season’s ninth race in third place in the NHRA Top Fuel point standings 48 points behind the points leader, his teammate Doug Kalitta, and confidence breeds confidence.
The 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Season resumes June 22-23, 2024 at the PlayNHRA Virginia NHRA Nationals in Dinwiddie, Va.
Langdon has two wins in three final rounds this season and is clearly looking for more at each race. His complete confidence in his crew chief, Brian Husen, and the rest of the Kalitta Air Careers Toyota team, makes him feel he’s a threat to win at every race.
“We definitely get more and more confident when the car’s running like it is,” the 2013 Top Fuel champion said. “We’re looking forward to going to Richmond – the Franklin family does a great job with the facility; it’s probably the smoothest track we have on tour. It’ll be interesting going to a two-day event, and I’m all for it. For the last couple of years, I’ve felt that, potentially, it’s a move they’ve needed to look into. I’m excited to get there and try out the two-day weekend. Hopefully it goes well, and they’re able to get the fans there and pack the stands.
“My opinion is that our races are too long and drawn out. Most sports events are about three hours. At some point, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but sometimes, you just need to change things up a little bit to see if what you’re doing is still the right way to do it so I think the two-day event is good. It helps the teams cut down on some of the hotel costs and shortens the weekend. If you have X amount of people over three days, you hope all those people come to one of the two days. It’s one less day of working, one less day of overhead, one less night of hotels for the teams. It could be cheaper across the board as long as ticket sales stay where they are or increase.”
Along with the return to a track on which Langdon has never won but clearly likes, he and everyone else will be dealing with the hottest conditions of the season so far with temperatures in the mid-to-high 90s in the forecast.
“It’s gonna be tough,” Langdon said. “We’ll run slow, and it’ll be about managing the car to get it down the track. NHRA did a really good job over the last couple of races with some of the challenges at the tracks trying to accommodate the heat and tend to the tack, but there’s really only so much you can do. We’re going to a great facility with a great track, and there’s good air there, but when you have 130-140-degree track temperature, there’s only so much you can do. As a driver, you have to eat well and drink a lot of water to make sure you’re hydrated, but there’s really not any other adjustment the driver needs to make – the hard work is on all of the guys tuning the cars to make the adjustments.”