Al-Anabi Norwalk Report
Shawn Langdon – Al- Anabi Racing Top Fuel Dragster (silver)
Qualifying: Shawn Langdon was the No. 1 qualifier at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals. It was his third No. 1 qualifier of the season and the 16th of his career. During Saturday night’s final round of qualifying, Langdon set the track record elapsed time with a brilliant 3.745-second pass at 325.22 mph.
Eliminations: Langdon advanced to his fourth final round of the season and the 22nd of his career. He defeated Terry McMillen, Brittany Force and Troy Buff before losing to Antron Brown in the finals.
Unofficial Point Standings: Langdon remains third in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings. He trails second-place Antron Brown by 144 points and leads fourth-place Tony Schumacher by 153 points.
Langdon on Norwalk: “The Al-Anabi team made some great runs this weekend; we qualified No. 1 and made some excellent runs in eliminations. The final round was the first time we ran in the left lane today so we didn’t have a lot of information. We wanted to give Antron a great race in the finals, but we were just a little too aggressive and smoked the tires. We came into this weekend, changed a lot of things and reverted to some things we knew would work for the Al-Anabi car. We’ve been kind of chasing our tail for the last few races, and we just needed to get a little bit of confidence back. We wanted to get a race under our belts racing what we knew, and even though we didn’t win the race, it was a good weekend for the Al-Anabi team.”
Khalid alBalooshi – Al- Anabi Racing Top Fuel Dragster (gold)
Qualifying: Khalid alBalooshi was the No. 10 qualifier at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals. His best qualifying effort came in Saturday night’s final session when the Dubai native reached the finish line in 3.832 seconds at 316.97 mph.
Eliminations: AlBalooshi made his best run of the weekend by far in the first round of eliminations with a 3.786-second effort at 324.59 mph. However, Tony Schumacher’s elapsed time was 16 thousandths of a second quicker, and Schumacher got the round win.
Unofficial Point Standings: AlBalooshi remains eighth in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings. He trails seventh-place Brittany Force by 38 points and leads ninth-place Richie Crampton by 26 points.
AlBalooshi on Norwalk: “We lost in the first round, but we made a very good run. We’ve been trying a lot of different things this year, but we are so happy with how we ran in the first round. We did not win, but it was a very good run. We made some very good runs this week, and we feel good about our weekend. Now we are sure we have our car back with some of the new stuff, and I think we will be in a good race car for Denver. It is strange to lose the round but still feel happy, but we have a car to race with now.”
