{"id":104815,"date":"2026-09-18T01:44:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T01:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/for-kalitta-and-langdon-its-all-for-connie\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T01:44:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T01:44:06","slug":"for-kalitta-and-langdon-its-all-for-connie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/for-kalitta-and-langdon-its-all-for-connie\/","title":{"rendered":"For Kalitta and Langdon, It\u2019s All For Connie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBrian always just tells me, he says, I\u2019m just going to give you a car, and I\u2019m going to try to give you the car that they\u2019re going to have,\u201d Shawn Langdon said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll just leave it up to you and Doug, and you guys can battle it out.\u201d The Brian in question is Brian Husen, Langdon\u2019s crew chief at Kalitta Motorsports, the \u201cthey\u201d is the Mac Tools dragster parked right next door with Doug Kalitta in the seat and Alan Johnson making the calls, and that one sentence is about as good a summary as you\u2019re going to find of how this outfit has gone about its business in Top Fuel in 2026. Two cars in the same corner of the same shop, sharing data, sharing parts and sharing a boss, that then roll up to the starting line and try to beat each other\u2019s brains in.<\/p>\n

So far it\u2019s working out alright. Kalitta won the regular season championship by eight points, Langdon won the U.S. Nationals, and they\u2019ll start the Countdown to the Championship this weekend in Michigan seeded first and second. On Monday\u2019s NHRA pre-playoff media call, neither one of them tried to dress it up as anything other than what it is. \u201cIt\u2019s a cool deal because it\u2019s kind of bragging rights, too, a little bit, with the two teams right next to one another,\u201d Kalitta said. I\u2019ve been around enough two-car deals to know that \u201cteammate\u201d is often just a word on the press release, but in my opinion this one is the real thing, and I think a lot of that traces back to the two guys tuning the cars. Johnson and Husen go way back (Husen was the crew chief on Del Worsham\u2019s Al-Anabi dragster under Johnson when I wrote a cover story on Worsham in 2011, and Langdon won his 2013 championship with that same bunch), so when Husen says he\u2019s going to give Langdon the car they\u2019re going to have, he knows better than just about anybody alive what that car is going to be.<\/p>\n

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What gets lost if you only look at the final regular season standings is that this was anything but a runaway. Langdon came out of the gate hot, then cooled off for a stretch, and while he was scuffling Kalitta reeled off what Langdon described as three wins in a row, which is where the cushion came from. Then Langdon and Husen got it back together in a big way, went 345 mph at South Georgia Motorsports Park, won there and again at Maryland (two tracks that were brand new to the tour this year), and by the time everybody got to Indy the whole deal came down to whether Kalitta could go enough rounds on Monday to hold him off. \u201cGetting to the third round was a huge relief for me, because we were trying to definitely stay ahead, and it was going to be a tough day with the way Shawn\u2019s car was running,\u201d Kalitta admitted.<\/p>\n

Langdon won the race, Kalitta won the season and, as far as I can tell, nobody at Kalitta Motorsports went home unhappy. \u201cObviously we had our sights set on the regular season championship, but if you\u2019re going to lose it, might as well lose it to your teammate,\u201d Langdon said. \u201cWe want to keep everything for Connie Kalitta, everything he\u2019s done for us, everything he\u2019s done for the sport. That\u2019s our main goal, is to keep these cars one and two.\u201d Connie is the reason both of them talk the way they do. Doug is his nephew, and Langdon has said more than once that handing the boss a championship would mean as much to him as winning one himself. <\/p>\n

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He said it again Monday, and made a point to bring up somebody else while he was at it. \u201cBrian Husen, getting him a world championship as a crew chief would mean a lot to me as well,\u201d Langdon said. \u201cAnd a lot of the guys on the team that put in all those hard hours. It\u2019s not like the pressure thing isn\u2019t there, but ultimately we want to keep these cars one and two. However it falls, it falls. As long as we keep these cars one and two, one of us gets a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re thinking that all sounds a little too friendly for the top two seeds in a playoff, I get it. But consider where they\u2019re headed. The Countdown opens at US 131 Motorsports Park in Martin, Michigan, a couple hours from the Kalitta shop, and Doug Kalitta, 62, a two-time world champion who has been doing this at the highest level for the better part of three decades, has never once gotten to race an NHRA national event in his home state. By the sound of it, the whole company is coming. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of excitement with our employees and just sponsors,\u201d Kalitta said. \u201cWe have Applied Innovations, which is kind of headquartered over in that part of the state, on my car this weekend, so we look forward to hosting those guys.\u201d As for his notebook on the place, there isn\u2019t one. \u201cI\u2019ve been there just testing back in the day when I think Connie was driving,\u201d he said. \u201cSo really I can\u2019t even remember the place very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Funny enough, it\u2019s the California kid who knows the joint. Langdon has been going to 131 for years, just never in a fuel car, to run the big-money bracket races (in his words, the \u201chalf a million dollars, a million dollars\u201d deals) that made the track famous in a completely different corner of our sport. \u201cI\u2019ve always felt like it\u2019s got national event potential,\u201d Langdon said. \u201cI was really glad when the opportunity came about and Chad [Head, Kalitta Motorsports General Manager] had started talking about the potential of that track. I was all in for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kalitta will have something else on his mind this weekend, too, and it doesn\u2019t have anything to do with points. His son, Mitch, recently won in Top Alcohol Dragster at Bowling Green driving for Randy Meyer Racing, and he\u2019ll be in Michigan before sitting out Rockingham and St. Louis and coming back for the rest of the year. \u201cThe last couple of years, it started with Shawn giving him an opportunity to drive his Super Comp car,\u201d Kalitta said. \u201cSo we\u2019ve been gradually working our way up to where we\u2019re at today. And he\u2019s doing a great job. I\u2019m super proud of him.\u201d <\/p>\n

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The kid is cutting lights, according to his dad, and that kind of thing has a way of spreading through a race team. \u201cI think it all kind of motivates all of us, because he\u2019s really hitting it hard.\u201d (And how about Langdon, in the middle of a championship fight with the guy, being the one who put his son in a race car in the first place? That tells you about all you need to know about how this group operates.)<\/p>\n

Langdon, for his part, can\u2019t stop looking for reasons to run two cars at a national event. He was at Indy on Wednesday making laps in his sportsman car a full two days before Top Fuel qualifying started, and he\u2019s convinced it makes him better at his day job. \u201cSo much of what we do is mental, and just kind of building that confidence up early and getting some extra hits on the tree,\u201d Langdon said. \u201cI feel like I drive a little bit better when I\u2019m kind of in race mode already before the race starts.\u201d The problem is Sunday. He\u2019s been to the final round in two classes on the same day at Bristol, which he called \u201cpretty hectic,\u201d and he isn\u2019t sure that\u2019s something he wants to sign up for in a Countdown race. \u201cIf it was up to me, I would run both. Heck, I\u2019d run four or five if NHRA allowed it,\u201d Langdon said. \u201cBut at the end of the day, my job is to drive a Top Fuel car. Maybe St. Louis, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m contemplating that one.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Then there\u2019s Rockingham next weekend, which is the one wrinkle in all of this for a guy who has raced just about everywhere. \u201cI\u2019ve never been to Rockingham, no,\u201d Langdon said when he was asked point blank. The NHRA tour has never been there, either, which means that for the first two weeks of this Countdown nobody in Top Fuel has a page of notes to fall back on. Personally, I think that plays right into the hands of a team with two cars that have kept finding their way down the racetrack when others couldn\u2019t, and a crew chief in Husen who, by Langdon\u2019s account, does his homework and looks pretty deep at things.<\/p>\n

Does it hold up when the tune-up sheet is blank? That\u2019s what we\u2019re about to find out. Husen\u2019s going to give Langdon the car they\u2019re going to have, same as always. After that it\u2019s up to him and Doug.<\/p>\n

The post For Kalitta and Langdon, It\u2019s All For Connie<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBrian always just tells me, he says, I\u2019m just going to give you a car, and I\u2019m going to try to give you the car that they\u2019re going to have,\u201d Shawn Langdon said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll just leave it up to you and Doug, and you guys can battle it out.\u201d The Brian in question is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}