KALITTA TOYOTAS SHINE IN NHRA CAROLINA NATIONALS QUALIFYING

PLANO, TX – Doug Kalitta captured number one qualifier honors in Top Fuel, while teammate J.R. Todd continued his strong late season run with a second in his DHL Toyota Camry Funny Car as all seven Toyota drivers qualified in the top half of the field for Sunday’s Carolina Nationals at the zMAX Dragway in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Kalitta ran a 3.723-second pass at 329.50 mph to capture the top spot in his Mac Tools Toyota as he picked up five valuable bonus points in Friday’s two sessions to kick off the Countdown to the Championship playoffs.

“With this being the first race of the Countdown, I feel like my car is running strong,” said Kalitta, who also won the pole earlier this year at Norwalk. “We haven’t got the Wally yet this season, but hopefully we are saving it for these last six races.”

Overall, it was an exceptional qualifying run for the Kalitta Motorsports team as Kalitta, Todd, Alexis DeJoria and Shawn Langdon each earned bonus points for finishing in the top three of a session at least twice on the weekend.

Todd, the winner of two of the regular season’s final four races, ran the quick time of Friday’s first session and then ran a 3.898 in the second session to earn the second spot overall.  DeJoria provided the weekend’s most consistent qualifier as she placed second in the opening session, was fifth in Q2 and then second in Saturday’s early session before closing out her qualifying runs with the third-quickest time in the final round.  She will start fifth overall in her Tequila Patrón Camry on Sunday.

Rounding out the Toyota Funny Car contingent was Cruz Pedregon, who placed eighth overall.

In Top Fuel, two-time defending champion Antron Brown will start from the fourth position on Sunday with a quick time just .005 seconds off Kalitta’s pole run.  Richie Crampton qualified seventh in just his second run of the season.  Despite qualifying eighth today, Shawn Langdon showed that he may be a force on Sunday with two strong runs in the mid-day heat that each earned him bonus points – placing third in Saturday’s first session and second in the final run – just .001 seconds off the quick time of the round.

Sunday’s NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series eliminations will be televised live on FS1 beginning at 2:00 p.m. (EDT).