Four Toyotas Advance To Second Round At NHRA Northwest Nationals
SEATTLE, WA – Four Toyota drivers advanced to the second round in Magic Dry Organic Absorbent NHRA 
Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways.
In Top Fuel, both Antron Brown and Doug Kalitta won their opening rounds, while J.R. Todd and Shawn Langdon did the same in Funny Car.
Brown entered the race with three consecutive Seattle event victories and defeated fellow Toyota driver Richie Crampton in the first round with a 3.798-second pass as Crampton smoked the tires early. That would set-up a second-round match-up with Steve Torrence in a battle between the Top Fuel point leaders. The two would run side-by-side through the first 330 feet before Brown went up in smoke, snapping his consecutive round win streak at the track at 13.
“We had a really consistent Matco Tools Toyota here and we’ll take all the positives away,” said Brown. We leave here in second place, so we’re making points, but we really just need to consistently make the semis and get to the finals. We just need to raise our performance a little bit and we’ll be right where we need to be at the right time.”
Kalitta defeated Scott Palmer in his opening round match-up with an impressive 3.789-second pass. In round two, Mike Salinas had the starting line advantage, but Kalitta was up in smoke and clicked it off early giving the win to Salinas.
Todd went into today’s eliminations as the number two seed and impressed in round one as he had a sizable lead over Jeff Diehl at the tree and then ran a stellar 3.934 for the win. In round two, he had a slight advantage over Ron Capps early, but overpowered the track by 300 feet and shut it off.
Langdon would open the day with Cruz Pedregon in round one after qualifying sixth on Saturday. They had identical reaction times and then it was all Langdon with a 3.926-second run for the win. Only John Force would make a quicker pass on race day. It marked the sixth consecutive race that Langdon has earned at least one round win.
After a weekend off, the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series will resume action with the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway, Aug. 16-18.
