TOPEKA, Kan.– NHRA veteran Scott Kalitta, driver of the 8,000-horsepower DHL Toyota Solara Funny Car, is ready to return to racing this weekend, May 30-June 1, for the annual running of O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka in Topeka, Kan., after a weekend of remembrance and relaxation in observance of Memorial Day.
Kalitta is the 2nd winningest driver in the 20-year history of HPT. He claimed six title trophies in the Top Fuel category at the auto racing jewel of America’s Heartland. Kalitta is hoping that his trip to Topeka this weekend will once again find him and his DHL team in the track’s familiar winner’s circle, but for the first time in a flopper.
“Topeka has been a great place for me as a racer. There’s no doubt about that,” Kalitta, a 46-year old resident of Palmetto, Fla., said. “Now, if we can just get that to translate into a Funny Car win, our DHL team would probably try to get NHRA to hold every event there. We stayed to test after Bristol (Tenn., previous event), and we made some changes that produced some promising results, so we’re very optimistic heading into this weekend.”
Kalitta is currently in 19th place in POWERade Funny Car championship points.
Kalitta is the son of team owner and drag racing legend Conrad “Connie” Kalitta. He returned to the Funny Car class in 2006 after many successful years at the helm of a Top Fuel dragster. He won the NHRA Top Fuel World Championship in 1994 and 1995 as well as 17 NHRA national event trophies, but got his first professional NHRA national event win under the carbon fiber canopy of a Funny Car in Houston in 1989.
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.
All times and dates subject to change.
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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