Al-Anabi Racing Ready for Carlyle Tools NHRA Carolina Nationals
Shawn Langdon, Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel Dragster (silver):
Shawn Langdon enters the Carlyle Tools NHRA Carolina Nationals, the first event of the Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs, in first place in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings. He completed the regular season with a 215-point lead over second-place Spencer Massey, but after the points reset for the Countdown, his lead is now 30 points.
Langdon prior to Charlotte:
“We have met a lot of the goals we set at the beginning of the season winning five races, winning the Traxxas Shootout, winning Indy and being the No. 1 seed for the Countdown. So it’s been a great year so far. The Al-Anabi car has been running great, and now we’re in the Countdown. There can be no mistakes from here on out; we have six races to basically determine your whole year, and we’re excited. We can’t wait to get back to Charlotte and the race we won last year, and we’re looking forward to getting off on the right foot in the Countdown.
“I don’t really think it’s going to be any different going back as the defending champions of this event; we just have to keep the same focus we’ve had all year long. Earlier this year in the spring race at Charlotte, we had a great car all weekend, but we had a little hiccup in the final and smoked the tires. We actually had a great car that whole weekend through qualifying and into eliminations where we actually had a few hundredths on the rest of the field on certain runs so I think if we can take a little bit from that race and apply it to this weekend, we’ll have a great shot at defending last year’s win.
“It would be huge to win the first race of the Countdown and get that little cushion. We have a small 30-point cushion as the No. 1 seed, but getting that first win would be huge not only for our team to continue the momentum we’ve built up but also to start putting some pressure on our competitors. If we can walk out of Charlotte with a bigger lead than we had coming into the event, I think a couple of teams might make some mistakes as they start trying to make up some ground. It’s hard to make up ground when you only have six races in the Countdown – it’s hard. In a perfect world, you start winning from the get-go to maintain that throughout the rest of the Countdown.
“The Countdown is pressure time, and I am excited about it. We race for those big moments; you want to be in those pressure situations where 20 years down the road, you can look back on those big runs when you were fighting for a championship. That’s how all the big names out there got to be where they are, and that’s by performing in pressure situations. I love everything about it. This is my job, but I’m also living my dream. I just want to be the best. I want to do whatever to make myself the best. It’s not anything that comes from (team owner) Sheikh Khalid or (team manager) Alan Johnson, you just know that being part of the Al-Anabi team, they’re there to win championships. They’re going to do whatever it takes to give you a race car that’s going to win championships, so it’s up to you to perform. I want nothing more than to be able to perform as a driver. So it’s basically up to me right now. The Al-Anabi team will just try to do the best job that we can, and we just want to basically take it one round at a time, make the best run for that situation and hopefully the wins and the championships will come along with it.”
Khalid alBalooshi, Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel Dragster (gold):
Khalid alBalooshi enters the Carlyle Tools NHRA Carolina Nationals, the first event of the Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs, in fifth place in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings. He trails fourth-place Doug Kalitta by 10 points and leads sixth-place Antron Brown by 10 points. Prior to the points reset for the Countdown, he trailed fourth-place Doug Kalitta by 12 points and lead sixth-place Antron Brown by 39 points.
AlBalooshi prior to Charlotte:
“I feel very excited; this is the first race ever for me in the Countdown. I am very excited, and I hope our team will be doing well this week. It is the first race for everybody, not just our team. Everyone will be thinking about every point; no race will be easy. Everybody will be very careful now. I think, especially in the first two or three races, everybody has a big chance to win the Championship; it will be different. I have been watching what is happening. In the regular season, everybody is trying to go fast, and sometimes they spin the tires because they are trying to go too fast. Now in the Countdown, I think teams will be more cautions because every point is important. The driver, the crew chief and the crew – everybody must do his job perfectly.
“If I tell myself, ‘I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it,’ or if I think about it too much, I will put too much pressure on myself. I am not going to do it like that. I will go to Charlotte this week to do my best, and I know everybody on our team will try his best. If something good happens for our team, great. If not, OK. We’ll do our best. If I put a lot of pressure on myself, it will not help anything. So we’ll go into the Countdown, do the best we can for the Al-Anabi team, and whatever happens happens.”
