KALITTA, TOYOTA ADVANCE TO TOP FUEL FINALS AT NHRA MILE HIGH NATIONALS
DENVER, CO – Doug Kalitta drove his Mac Tools Toyota dragster to the Top Fuel finals before falling to Leah 
Pritchett by just two one-thousandths of a second at the NHRA Mile High Nationals at the Bandimere Speedway in Denver, Sunday. Today’s showing marked the fourth final round appearance of the season for Kalitta.
He opened up a thrilling day of racing by defeating Tony Schumacher by inches in the opening round with an official margin of victory of .0001 second. After knocking off Jim Maroney in the second round, Kalitta then advanced to the finals with a hole-shot victory over Blake Alexander in the semifinals. In the finals, Kalitta had .019 lead at the tree and led early before Pritchett edged him at the finish line.
“Anytime you are on the mountain and in the final is a good day,” said Kalitta. “I was really impressed by the Mac Tools Toyota team today after the way we struggled in qualifying. They worked so hard. We accomplished a lot and came so close to winning. On the bright side, we have put ourselves into a position to gain a few positions in the Countdown if we continue to run well down the stretch. I am already excited for the Toyota Sonoma Nationals.”
Richie Crampton registered a victory over Terry McMillen in his opening run of the day, but was unable to make a clean pass in round two as he went down to defeat against Clay Millican. Antron Brown rounded out the Toyota Top Fuel contingent with a first-round loss to Scott Palmer after suffering a hole out as soon as he hit the gas.
Cruz Pedregon was the top Toyota in Funny Car. The Snap-on Camry advanced to the second round with a win over Jonnie Lindberg and then was well ahead of John Force in round two before suffering what appeared to be a problem with the head gasket that set off the automatic shutdown of the engine. Despite having the engine shutdown, Pedregon would still out-run Force, only to lose on a hole-shot.
“I feel like we should have won that second round,” said Pedregon, who overcame a major explosion that destroyed his Funny Car body on Friday night. “We had a pretty good lead on John (Force) at half-track. I think we may have pushed a head gasket out and I knew we were in trouble when the engine just shut down. The Snap-on Toyota Camry was awesome. If you weren’t out here on Friday and just came out Saturday and Sunday, you would have thought we had a great weekend. We had a car that, arguably, was on pace to run low E.T. of the round, but it’s always tough when you’re on the mountain. We’re going to get everything fixed up and another body shipped out by Thursday and be ready to go in Sonoma.”
Both J.R. Todd and Shawn Langdon fell in their opening runs in Funny Car, with Todd losing to Ron Capps and Langdon falling to Tim Wilkerson.
The Mello Yello Drag Racing Series heads to Sonoma, Calif., next weekend for the Toyota Sonoma Nationals at Sonoma Raceway, the second stop on this year’s Western Swing.
