LANGDON, TOYOTA ADVANCE TO DALLAS NHRA FINALS
ENNIS, TX – Shawn Langdon was defeated by Brittany Force by just one-thousandth of a second in the Top Fuel 
final to lead Toyota at the AAA Texas NHRA FallNationals at the Texas Motorplex in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
Langdon defeated Clay Millican in round one and Terry Haddock in round two to set up a match-up between he and fellow Toyota driver Antron Brown in the semi-finals. After leaving with identical reaction times, Langdon edged out Brown by .014 seconds to advance to face Force. In the final, Langdon had the advantage at the light, .048 to .059, but was narrowly edged at the finish line, despite running a 3.693-second pass.
“The guys did a fantastic job in giving me a great race car,” said Langdon, the 2013 Top Fuel world champion. ”I had all the confidence. I felt good on the tree and we stepped it up in the finals. Unfortunately, we came up one-thousandth short. Brittany did a great job. If you had told me before the final that I would go .048 and 3.69, I would have liked my chances. They were just one thousandth better.
“It stings a little bit, but I’m just proud of this whole Global Electronic Technology Toyota team for fighting hard. They fought hard all day and gave me a great car. If we have a car like that for the last two races, I plan on winning at least one of them. It would be awesome to get another win in Top Fuel (before moving over to Funny Car next year). My plan is to win the next two – that’s my goal. It will be a big change next year and I’m excited about it, but my plan is to just focus on the rest of this year first.”
Brown had defeated Shawn Reed and Leah Pritchett in the first two rounds before falling to Langdon in the semi-finals. He has now advanced to the semi-finals in three consecutive Countdown to the Championship races.
All four Toyota Top Fuel drivers advanced to the second round or beyond. In addition to Brown and Langdon, Richie Crampton matched the quickest run of the first round with a 3.683-second pass in defeating Billy Torrence and then lost a close match-up to Steve Torrence in round two. Doug Kalitta also went to the second round today before falling to Force.
Alexis DeJoria advanced to the second round today before falling to eventual winner Robert Hight. Since the Countdown has begun, DeJoria has now out-scored five of the 10 Funny Car playoff drivers.
Things didn’t go as well for the remainder of the Toyota Funny Car drivers as the changing weather conditions resulted in 11 of the 16 Funny Car drivers being unable to run a clean pass in the opening round. J.R. Todd, Cruz Pedregon and Del Worsham were among that group, with each being eliminated in round one.
The NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series moves on to Las Vegas for the NHRA Toyota Nationals, October 27-29.
