TOPEKA, Kan.,This weekend, May 30-June 1, Doug Kalitta, driver of the 8,000-horsepower “Big Red” Mac Tools Top Fuel dragster, heads to the Heartland for the annual running of the O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka in Topeka, Kan., with hopes of holding a title trophy for the first time in the 2008 POWERade Drag Racing Series.
Kalitta visited victory lane at HTP in 2006 with a final-round win over Brandon Bernstein. Kalitta also holds the track record for elapsed time in Topeka, 4.487 seconds (2004).
In the previous five NHRA national events, Kalitta and the Mac Tools team have made three semi-final finishes and one quarter-final finish. Kalitta and his team have moved up six places in the POWERade championship points tally in that span from 14th to 8th.
“We’ve been steadily improving, and that’s always a good thing,” Kalitta, a 43-year old resident of Ann Arbor, Mich., said. “The Mac Tools team stayed to test after Bristol (Tenn., previous event), and we found a few problems that had been plaguing us in the fuel system, so now our car should be even better.
“Topeka has been good to us in the past. Hopefully it will be again, and we can get our first win of the season this weekend.”
Since winning the NHRA’s equivalent of Rookie of the Year, the Automobile Club of Southern California’s Road to the Future Award after the 1998 drag racing season, Kalitta has driven his dragster to 30 Top Fuel national event titles, which places him in sixth in career wins for the sport’s quickest and fastest class. In the past five NHRA seasons, Kalitta has solidified his place among the best Top Fuel pilots of all-time. In 2006, he won a career-high five national events in 2006 and led the POWERade points for almost the entire second half of the season. After finishing just 14 points shy of his first NHRA championship, Kalitta garnered his third career runner-up points finish in 2006. He was also points runner-up in 2003 and 2004. In 2007, he won one event – the event held in Richmond, Va.
The O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals begins Friday for the nitro-fueled classes with two qualifying sessions at 4:30 p.m. (CT) and 7:00 p.m. Two more qualifying opportunities take place Saturday at noon and 2:30 p.m. The top sixteen qualified cars will race Sunday in final eliminations beginning at 11:00 a.m.
The O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals is the 9th of 24 national events in the 2008 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series.
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