There’s pressure at every NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series event, but when the Countdown to the Championship starts, that pressure grows even more. Racers know that every round could make or break their title hopes. The Kalitta Motorsports racers are all seasoned veterans and are ready for what the 2025 Countdown is bringing to the table.

Kalitta Wants Consistency At St. Louis

The key to a successful NHRA Countdown championship run is to grab the points lead early and hold on to it through the finals at Pomona. That’s exactly what Doug Kalitta has in his sights as the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Countdown to the Championship hits the halfway mark this weekend at the NAPA Auto Parts NHRA Midwest Nationals in Madison, Illinois.

Kalitta, the reigning 2023 Top Fuel champ, comes into St. Louis sitting atop the standings with a 38-point edge over Justin Ashley. He wasn’t the top seed coming in, he started in third when the Countdown began, but a final-round appearance in Reading vaulted him into the lead, and another runner-up finish in Charlotte kept him there. But this fight is far from settled. Teammate Shawn Langdon lurks just 59 points back, and Tony Stewart sits 68 behind in fourth, well within striking distance.

“That’s what makes this fun,” Kalitta said. “This championship battle is the opportunity we all pray for at the beginning of the year – to be in it at the end. Alan and Mac have this Mac Tools group focused on the task at hand – they’re digging hard.”

The start to the countdown has been challenging for Kalitta and his team. In Reading, the team was forced to roll out a brand-new backup car on race day after a second-round incident. In Charlotte, gremlins in the electronics created more headaches. Still, both times, the Alan Johnson–tuned Mac Tools dragster fought through adversity and made it to the final round.

“We had some computer issues, and that was about the main thing,” Kalitta said. “We’re still sorting out the new car, but we’ve got the best in the business looking at everything. Alan, Mac, and Mark have it figured out, and now we’ll drag it to St. Louis and be ready to go.”

If there’s one thing this Mac Tools group has shown, it’s consistency. Kalitta has qualified in the top four at 13 of 16 events this season, including seven number one qualifiers. That’s the kind of performance that wins championships. With the Countdown hitting its midpoint, every round becomes more critical — and Kalitta knows the best way to survive the gauntlet is to keep stacking points, one win light at a time.

Langdon Locked In For Round Wins At St. Louis

Shawn Langdon knows that if he wants to stay in the hunt for a Top Fuel world title, he needs to collect wins and points, period. The 2013 NHRA Top Fuel world champion knows there’s no room for distractions as the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Countdown to the Championship rolls into the NAPA Auto Parts Midwest Nationals this weekend in Madison, Illinois.

Langdon has had a solid start to the six-race playoff stretch. He advanced to the second round at Reading, then put together a semifinal finish last weekend at zMAX Dragway in NHRA’s first-ever four-wide playoff event. But in true Kalitta Motorsports fashion, “solid” isn’t good enough. The 25th Anniversary Kalitta Air dragster ended the Charlotte weekend third in the quad, behind teammate Doug Kalitta and race winner Justin Ashley. That result leaves Langdon sitting third in points — 59 back from Kalitta and just nine behind Ashley — with only 100 points separating the top five contenders.

“The Kalitta Air Careers car’s good,” Langdon said. “We set the low ET (elapsed time) of the semifinals (in Charlotte), but it should have run faster than it did in the final round. We’re addressing that this week and will go from there; we’ll be alright. We really want to have a great weekend in St. Louis and get this Kalitta Air 25th Anniversary car back on top of the standings.”

With just 16 rounds of racing left in the Countdown to the Championship, Langdon and crew chief Brian Husen know exactly what it takes to stay in the fight.

“Every round counts, especially in the Countdown, and we’ll be ready to go this weekend,” Langdon added. “The guys give me a great race car every week. From my perspective, my job doesn’t change; I hit the gas as far as it goes and hold it as straight as I can. That’s my focus. I’m trying not to get sucked into all the distractions. I do my best to keep my head down and not get distracted by all the nonsense. I focus on my lane and try to win a championship. That’s all we really care about.”

With four races left, Langdon is within striking distance, and if history shows anything, he knows how to close when the pressure is on.

J.R. Todd Read To Break Through In St. Louis

Rebuilding a race team doesn’t happen overnight, and J.R. Todd’s DHL GR Supra Funny Car crew is living that reality as the NHRA Countdown to the Championship pushes into its halfway point. The 2018 Funny Car champ and his team have shown flashes of speed this season, including a big win in New Hampshire and strong qualifying performances late in the regular season. But the Countdown has been a different story, Todd has yet to win a round through the first two playoff events.

“We definitely need more performance,” Todd said. “We’ve shown we can make strong runs in just about any conditions, and we’ve had some strong qualifying results. But when race day rolls around, we’ve struggled. Like I’ve been saying all season, we’re still learning. We made a lot of changes when Dickie (Crew Chief Dickie Venables) joined the team before the season started. I think it’s all part of the process. This team is strong, the Yella Fellas work as hard as any crew out here, and we’ll get there eventually.”

Right now, Todd sits ninth in the Funny Car standings. That said, with four races left, there’s still plenty of time to make noise. For Todd, the focus isn’t on points but on progress.

“We just need to go out there, figure out how to perform and do our thing,” Todd said. “We don’t need to worry about where we are in the points or what we need to do there – just focus on our performance. It’s not hard to do that at this point because we’ve kind of put ourselves in a hole. We need to dig our way out a little bit before we start worrying about points and where we are in the standings. It would definitely be really nice to win another race before the season’s over.”

That chance comes this weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway, a track known for fast conditions when the air is cool, but also a tricky racing surface with bumps that can test even the best tuners.

Each track is different, and St. Louis has its own characteristics with some bumps here and there. When it’s cool and the conditions are right, it can definitely be fast. It’s another track that’s somewhat close to Indy so it draws in that Indy crowd of people. It’s somewhat of a home race for a lot of people in our sport that live there. It’s another track where we haven’t won that I’d like to check off the list,” Todd said.

For Todd and the DHL team, the challenge now is clear: find the race-day consistency that’s been missing, and prove this rebuild is on the right track.