CONCORD, N.C. – Doug Kalitta, driver of the “Big Red”, Nitro-fueled, 8,000-horsepower Mac Tools Top Fuel dragster, enters this weekend’s, Sept. 11-14, inaugural running of the NHRA Carolinas Nationals at zMax Dragway at Concord in Concord, N.C., just a few miles from downtown Charlotte, as one of ten Top Fuel drivers in the 2008 NHRA Countdown to 1. The NHRA Carolinas Nationals is the first of six events in this year’s Countdown to1.
Kalitta and the Mac Tools team are certainly looking forward to competing at the new race track at zMax Dragway @ Concord, which has been widely heralded as the new epicenter of drag racing, but their focus will be centered on the performance of the Mac Tools flagship rail and making their run for a season championship.
In years past, before the Countdown to the Championship “playoffs” system was first employed by NHRA last season, Kalitta would enter this weekend’s grand opening in the Tar Heel State in 9th place in points, and an insurmountable 940 points behind the POWERade points leader. Under the 2008 Countdown to 1 points tally, Kalitta still enters the event in 9th, but now trails the leader by only 100 points.
“This is like a new beginning to the season for us,” Kalitta, a 44-year old resident of Ann Arbor, Mich., said. “Everything we’ve struggled with this season getting to this point is wiped clean, and we get a chance to go for the championship. The Mac Tools dragster has been getting better and better in the past few events, and we’re hitting our stride at the right time.”
Kalitta posted a runner-up finish, his first of the season, at the previous event, the famed Mac Tools U. S. Nationals, in Indianapolis. At the event in Brainerd, Minn., two events previous to Indy, Kalitta recorded his fourth semi-final showing of the year.
This weekend’s event in the Charlotte area will not be Kalitta’s first racing foray in what has become the new Mecca of auto racing in the United States. Kalitta, the 1994 USAC National Sprint Car Champion, raced occasionally in the ARCA stock car series in the mid and late 90s, including a begrudgingly memorable race at Lowes Motor Speedway, which sits within eyesight of the new zMax Dragway @ Concord.
“We ran an ARCA car at LMS once,” Kalitta continued. “All I remember now is that we blew up two engines practicing and qualifying. We pieced one together for the race and we managed to finish the race, but we were pretty far back. Hopefully we’ll have a lot better showing on the drag strip.”
Beginning with the 13th event in Denver, the NHRA instituted a new racing distance for the nitro-fueled classes of Funny Car and Top Fuel dragster to 1,000 ft., as opposed to the traditional distance of 1,320 ft., or a quarter of a mile, as a temporary safety solution to help the drivers of the world’s quickest and fastest racing safely bring their cars to a stop more efficiently. The unprecedented action, which will be observed for the remainder of the 2008 season, is in response to the tragic death of Kalitta Motorsports’ Scott Kalitta, Doug’s cousin, who died in a high-speed Funny Car qualifying accident in Englishtown, N.J., June 21.
Doug, unofficially, recorded the quickest 1,000-ft. elapsed time in NHRA history, 3.758 sec., in Joliet, Ill., in 2004.
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, Doug 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, he 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, Doug 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.
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