Countdown Picture Just As Mysterious As It Was In Beginning

With two of six Countdown races completed, no NHRA racer has taken a clear advantage in any class.

Points leads changed hands in Top Fuel and Pro Stock after Sunday’s AAA Texas NHRA Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex.

Moreover, Top Fuel saw two new leaders forge a first-place tie. That makes four lead changes among three individuals in the course of two events, with displaced Spencer Massey only two points behind in third place. Fourth-ranked Morgan Lucas is just 35 points off Doug Kalitta’s and Shawn Langdon’s pace as the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series shifts this weekend to suburban St. Louis for the AAA Insurance Midwest Nationals.

Mike Edwards, battling shoulder problems and the resurgent Jeg Coughlin and Jason Line, lost his nearly year-long grip on the Pro Stock lead, as Line joined Kalitta, Cruz Pedregon (Funny Car) and Eddie Krawiec (Pro Stock Motorcycle) in the Dallas winners circle.

Sunday seemed to be a day of restoration for at least three of the four winners. Kalitta broke a 71-race winless streak that dated back to the June 2010 race at Denver. Krawiec, so used to winning before the NHRA instituted rules that achieved parity but cost the Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson team lots of money and energy, won for the first time this year. And Pro Stock’s Line, who has fallen below his own performance standard this season, won for the first time since April (at Houston), Only Pedregon, with this fourth victory, had found himself in any sort of groove this year.

TOP FUEL  – Doug Kalitta (3.842 seconds, 320.43 mph) def. Shawn Langdon 3.896,291.32)

Preseason buzz said that this year was going to belong to Doug Kalitta and his Mac Tools Dragster team. It would be a popular scenario, complete with the crew members wrestling and punching and knocking one another down at the starting line, as is the Kalitta Motorsports tradition.

And he has done well this season, with a Norwalk runner-up finish and five No. 1 qualifying positions. But the pilot and airline owner from Ann Arbor, Mich., has been Stealth-like as he pursues the same goal as his rivals.

But everybody saw Sunday what Doug Kalitta can do and how crew chief Jim Oberhofer has the car running especially competitively when it counts most – during the Countdown. It was hard to miss his 1,000-foot blast with Shawn Langdon dogging him every foot of the way as he sought his sixth victory this season for Al-Anabi Racing.

And who could miss the boisterous, riotous rugby-like scrum his team engaged in when he outran the No. 1 qualifier to grab a share of the points lead with Langdon? The racers knocked Spencer Massey from first place to third, while the Kalitta Motorsports gang knocked each other down and pig-piled on one another in celebration.

“It’s definitely going to be a momentum-builder for us the rest of the year. It will be a great confidence-builder for me and for all my guys,” Kalitta said. “After awhile, you start wondering if you can win again with one of these things. We’ve been qualifying good and going rounds. I was just trying to make sure I didn’t screw it up,” Kalitta said.

“It’s just great to see the excitement with everybody on my team and my sponsors – and my daughter [Avery],” he said.

He said all day Sunday he was “just praying the win light’s going to be on in my lane in every run. I was able to see it all four runs, too, trust me. I was looking for that thing hard.”

Same as with his first NHRA Top Fuel championship.

FUNNY CAR – Cruz Pedregon (4.106 seconds, 312.06 mph) def. John Force (4.220, 270.27)

This final-round match-up between two veterans and multiple-time champions was a throwback to the 1992 season, when Pedregon won here and went on to interrupt Force’s championship streak, perhaps christening their longtime rivalry. Force declared earlier in the day, “I almost died here. I always swore I’d come back and win. I ain’t quitting this sport until I win at the Motorplex.” With his nasty 2007 crash for motivation, Force could have pulled it off in his Castrol Ford Mustang. And Pedregon, who got a kick out of Force’s pre-showdown hype and Force referring to him as a kid, thought Force could do it, too. “I thought it would be a Cinderella story for him to win,” the Snap-on Tools Camry owner-driver said.

Ultimately, Pedregon pulled away for the victory as Force hazed his tires. That gave Pedregon his fourth triumph this season (matching Matt Hagan’s and Johnny Gray’s totals), his fourth victory at Dallas, and another black cowboy hat. He might just wear the black hat in the class, for he has improved four places to enter the third race of the playoffs in second place, only 51 behind leader Matt Hagan.

Pedregon said he thought Sunday’s march to the winners circle “was an uphill battle. I felt like every round we got better.” And that included two engine swaps in the course of four rounds. After beating Blake Alexander and Bob Tasca, the two-time champion faced the winner of the Jack Beckman-Hagan faceoff. But he said he didn’t think about Countdown implications – he was busy making sure his engine swap went letter-perfect. “Pick your poison, Beckman or Hagan,” he said, knowing how wickedly tough this class is to conquer. Beckman knocked out his DSR mate and points leader Hagan, but Pedregon had something for Beckman, too. Then he denied Force a 135th career victory.

Sunday’s achievements were ancient history to him by the time he met with reporters, which was probably a half-hour after he posed for pictures on the podium. “I’m already thinking about St. Louis: What are we going to do at St. Louis?” he said.

He said, “There’s no runaway [favorite], which is what NHRA wants, which is what they’re getting. For anybody, myself included, to start looking [at a] championship, it’s way too early for that.”  

PRO STOCK – Jason Line (6.590 seconds, 211.16 mph) def. Shane Gray (6.595, 210.44)

Line solved his crisis of confidence Sunday by earning his second victory of the season in his KB/Summit Racing Camaro and second at the Motorplex in three years.

The final – which Line called “the oddest final of my life” — began with Line staging and setting off the Christmas Tree with a haywire, all-bulbs-flashing display. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I was thrown for a loop, and obviously Shane was, as well.” They managed to run a thrilling side-by-side race, with the Wally trophy and a custom-fit cowboy hat from Wild Bill’s Western Store in downtown Dallas going to Line. “

I wanted the cowboy hat,” Line said. After the wacky final, he said, “We were a little bit lucky, especially in the final. I don’t ever want to win that way, but it is what it is. Neither one of us exactly mowed the tree down [with .067- and.074-second reaction times].” Reminded that he gained the points lead for the first time this season (and the first time since dominating in 2011 for the series crown), Line said, using his dry sense of humor, “That’s more important. You can buy more cowboy hats if you win the championship.”

From where we were two months ago, to be the points leader, coming off two finals in a row . . .  It’s a small miracle, for sure. – Jason Line

Line said, reflecting on his year-long performance (one struggling and under-budgeted racers gladly would trade for, he said, “From where we were two months ago, to be the points leader, coming off two finals in a row . . .  It’s a small miracle, for sure. That’s certainly a testimony” to the KB/Summit team and sponsors and everyone involved with the North Carolina-based operation. He said, “We have worked harder than we have in a long, long, long, long time.

PRO STOCK MOTORCYCLE – Eddie Krawiec (6.951 seconds, 191.87 mph) def. Matt Smith (6.913, 194.55)

Krawiec said he told Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson teammate Andrew Hines as they left the Brownsburg, Ind., shop to go to Charlotte for the first Countdown race that he felt confident. A reluctant Hines said, “I hope you’re right.” After Hines won at Charlotte and Krawiec followed suit at Dallas, Krawiec said he hoped he was wrong – because his prediction was their team would capture two Wally statues in the first four of the six playoff races. “I’m hoping I’m wrong, that we’re going to win four of the next four,” Krawiec said. “I don’t want to sound greedy. We’re just confident. You’ve got to have that confidence in you.

“I’m excited to be peaking at this time, If I can get my reaction times where I want ‘em and be racing better, I think I’m going to give these guys a run for their money,” he said. “We’ll rise to the top again, trust me.”

Adding to his self-assurance was how he beat strong contender Matt Smith: on a holeshot. Krawiec had the edge at the Christmas tree, with a .052-second reaction time against Smith’s .096 on the Matt Smith Racing / Viper Motorcycle Company Buell.

If I can get my reaction times where I want ‘em and be racing better, I think I’m going to give these guys a run for their money,” he said. “We’ll rise to the top again, trust me. – Eddie Krawiec

“It’s huge,” reigning champion Krawiec said of his first victory since last October at Las Vegas, also against Smith. Michael Ray spoiled Vance & Hines’ bid for a perfect season at this event last year. So this was the one race neither Krawiec nor Hines could win – and this season it’s the only one Krawiec HAS won.

TEXANS TRIUMPH – Texans Donald Thomas (Competition Eliminator), Jerry Emmons (Stock), Scooter Choate (Super Comp), Jimmy Lewis (Super Gas), and Lee Lightfoot (Top Dragster) led the list of sportsman winners. Jim Whiteley took the Top Alcohol Dragster trophy from the No. 1 starting position, and Shane Westerfield was the Top Alcohol Funny Car winner. Anthony Bertozzi claimed the Wally in the Super Stock class.