Todd Drives Camry To Victory At NHRA Gatornationals

Langdon Earns Top Fuel Runner-up Honors

GAINESVILLE, FL – J.R. Todd drove his DHL Camry to victory at the 52nd annual Amalie Oil Gatornationals at the Gainesville Raceway to kick off Toyota’s 20th season of NHRA competition in fine fashion Sunday. With the win, Todd completed the NHRA Grand Slam of winning the four biggest events in the sport – the Gatornationals, the Winternationals, the U.S. Nationals and the NHRA Finals.

Todd began the day as the sixth seed and opened up with victories over Blake Alexander and Tim Wilkerson in the first two rounds.  In the semifinals, he left the line even with Cruz Pedregon before surging ahead by the 60’ mark and never trailed. That would set up a match-up with Robert Hight in the finals. Todd enjoyed a .010-second advantage on the tree, only to see both cars smoke the tires quickly. Todd was able to recover first, though, and led by more than three-tenths at the 330’ mark and drove off to an easy victory.

Todd wasn’t the only Toyota driver to have success on Sunday, though, as each of the five Toyota-backed drivers won at least one round and Shawn Langdon fell just short of making it a Toyota sweep on the day, advancing to the Top Fuel final before falling to Josh Hart.

Langdon’s day included wins over Doug Foley and Leah Pruett before facing fellow Toyota pilot Antron Brown in the semifinals. In the heat of the finals, Langdon appeared to overpower the track midway down the track with Hart taking the win.

Antron Brown opened his day with a holeshot victory over Mike Salinas, running a 3.759 and then knocked off Billy Torrence in round two before falling to Langdon in the semifinals.

Doug Kalitta won his opening round match-up with Arthur Allen, but smoked the tires early in round two giving the win to Justin Ashley.

Alexis DeJoria registered the second-quickest Funny Car pass of race day with a 3.918-second pass in her opening round win over John Smith. Unfortunately, she had a problem early in round two and fell to Pedregon.

Next up on the Camping World Drag Racing Series schedule is the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, Calif., April 9-11.