Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel driver Shawn Langdon makes his semi-final run against Doug Kalitta in front of a packed grandstand in Kent, Washington, just outside Seattle.
It was a solid Seattle weekend for the Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel Team, the three-time and defending World Championship team owned by HE Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani. Khalid al-Balooshi followed last weekend’s California win with a good points weekend, and reigning World Champion Shawn Langdon reached the semi-finals at the 27th annual NHRA Sonoma Nationals yesterday, the 16th of 24 races that make up America’s 2014 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing season.
Langdon’s silver Al-Anabi car was solid all weekend; the team qualified third and made strong runs throughout the event. In the first round of eliminations, Langdon posted the quickest run of the entire weekend with a 3.787-second pass to defeat Clay Millican. In the second round, he faced al-Balooshi in a rematch of last week’s final round in Sonoma, California. This time, Langdon got the better of al-Balooshi in their 10th career head-to-head matchup and advanced to a semifinal race against Doug Kalitta, the points leader. Kalitta defeated Langdon and went onto win the race. Still, it was a solid Al-Anabi weekend; both teams are in fine form with two races remaining in the regular season.
“It really was a good day for the Al-Anabi team,” Langdon said. “We had a good race car up to the semi-finals. One focus point we’ve been working on is getting our car to have fast numbers early in the run. We’ve been able to achieve that, and we’re getting a safe tune-up now. It’s just a matter of fine-tuning it a little bit down the track. The Al-Anabi car is really fast; we just misjudged the track a little bit in the semifinals trying to make a good run against Doug Kalitta. All in all, we still had a good weekend. We qualified well and had a good car on race day so we’re pretty excited to get to Brainerd in two weeks.”
Al-Balooshi was the No 6 qualifier. He defeated seventh-place Brittany Force in the first round before losing to Langdon, in the second round of eliminations. One week ago today, al-Balooshi won the race with his teammate and took his second win of the season in Sonoma, California. Al-Balooshi remains eighth in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings, but he now trails seventh-place Brittany Force by just one point. He leads ninth-place Richie Crampton by 47 points. With two races to go on the regular season, he leads 10th place J.R. Todd by 81 points and leads 11th-place Bob Vandergriff by 199 points. The top-10 drivers in points qualify for the Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs.
“It was a good weekend for the gold Al-Anabi team until the second round on Sunday,” al-Balooshi said.
“I don’t know why our car dropped a cylinder at the start of the run; it surprised us. When I finished the run, I asked Jason (crew chief Jason McCulloch) what happened, and he told me, “Balooshi, I don’t know why,” but I know he will keep working on the car to see what’s going on. But we had one of the best cars all weekend. All weekend, we went down the track every time with no problems; we have our car back, so that is good for the rest of the season.”
The Al-Anabi Racing team will be back in action August 15-17, 2014, at the 33rd annual Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Minnesota.