The last time Doug Kalitta and his Mac Tools Toyota team were at In \u2018n Out Burger Raceway in Pomona, Calif., they won the race and claimed the 2023 NHRA Top Fuel title in a \u201cwinner take all\u201d final round at the season\u2019s final race. Later this week, they return to the site of perhaps the most monumental day in Kalitta\u2019s career. The 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Season resumes March 22-24, 2024 at the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, Calif.<\/p>\n
Including the win last November, Kalitta has seven wins in 14 final-round appearances at the historic southern California race track, but none was more special than what happened on that fateful November day. On the final day of the season\u2019s final race in the final round, Kalitta defeated Leah Pruett to clinch the championship. Going back to a place where one has enjoyed success before is always nice, but this time will be a bit more special.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always love Pomona and have had good luck there over the years,\u201d Kalitta said. \u201cWe pulled off the championship last time we were there, and going back will be really cool actually. I love Pomona \u2013 the history of that place \u2013 we\u2019re definitely looking forward to it, and we\u2019ll see how we\u2019re running when we get there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think really the whole environment that\u2019s going on with this Mac Tools team is pretty cool \u2013 we\u2019re super motivated, and our confidence is really high. That\u2019s the main thing \u2013 keeping the confidence up with what we\u2019re doing and everybody keeping their heads down and trying to do their thing regardless of where we are. When you get someplace where you\u2019ve had a lot of success, it always seems like maybe it\u2019s just a little easier to have higher confidence. We\u2019d like to make more memories this weekend!\u201d<\/p>\n
Off-season changes have the Mac Tools team looking a touch different this year. Longtime assistant Crew Chief Brian Husen is now Shawn Langdon\u2019s Crew Chief on the Kalitta Air Careers team, and Mac Savage returned to Kalitta Motorsports after several years and is now Alan Johnson\u2019s Assistant Crew Chief on the Mac Tools team. Kalitta enters this week\u2019s race tied with Justin Ashley for sixth place in the NHRA Top Fuel point standings after a second-round showing at the first race. The Mac Tools team is gelling nicely and ready to get back to work this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say the Mac Tools guys are dialed in really well with the personnel changes we made in the off season; everything\u2019s running real smooth,\u201d Kalitta added. \u201cWe had a change with Mac Savage coming in to replace Brian Husen, and Brian\u2019s doing a great job helping Mac get things set the way Alan likes to do it and doing a great job. We\u2019re working hard to make Shawn\u2019s car and my car as similar possible so we can take advantage of having two cars, and we saw that happening in Gainesville (Fla.), so we\u2019re on the right track.\u201d<\/p>\n
The post Reigning NHRA Top Fuel Champion Doug Kalitta Set for Pomona Return<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated | Drag Racing News, Opinion, Interviews, Photos, Videos and More<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The last time Doug Kalitta and his Mac Tools Toyota team were at In \u2018n Out Burger Raceway in Pomona, Calif., they won the race and claimed the 2023 NHRA Top Fuel title in a \u201cwinner take all\u201d final round at the season\u2019s final race. Later this week, they return to the site of perhaps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92037","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"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}