NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Some say preparation plus planning equals success, and if that’s the case, Kalitta Motorsports could very well be headed for an excellent season of NHRA Camping World Drag Racing. 

The 2023 season begins with the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals March 10-12 at historic Gainesville Raceway in Florida, but the three-car Kalitta team was there the second week of February to prepare.

For the Mac Tools Top Fuel team, driven by four-time Gatornationals winner Doug Kalitta, the test session was an opportunity to try out a new canopy the team is considering racing for the first time this season. While initial results were positive with a best run of 3.675 at 308.78 mph, the team will continue gathering data when it tests immediately prior to the Gatornationals.

“The canopy was good,” Kalitta said. “Visibility is good, it's quiet, which is one of the things a lot of people say. We have some things to work on to make sure it's right for us, and we're working on those things in the shop. We're trying to make it work better for our team, and we'll have an opportunity to try it out again on Wednesday right before the first race. Alan and Brian [co-crew chiefs Alan Johnson and Brian Husen] like what they saw and don't think the canopy is going to hurt anything, but we look forward to trying it out again when we get back down to Florida.  

“We made seven runs, and as far as the times, performance and what the car was doing, it was really happy,” the 49-time race winner added. “If the car is happy, you know Alan and Brian are happy with how the car was reacting. The reaction from those guys was very, very encouraging. This process is just a team effort; guys feed off one another. I am super excited because trying to go rounds and win races isn’t easy, but I think if we can put up the numbers that it looked like we should be able to run, hopefully consistently, we should be in a pretty good spot.”  

The DHL Funny Car needed just 3.866 seconds to reach the finish line at 332.34 mph in J.R. Todd’s best run of preseason testing. The 2018 NHRA Funny Car champion reached the final round once and made four semifinal appearances, but the team did not win a race in 2022. Todd, along with co-crew chiefs Todd Smith and Jon Oberhofer, left testing feeling good about what they accomplished and what hopefully lies ahead. 

“Yeah, testing was good,” Todd said. “The most important thing is we unloaded a brand-new Toyota Supra body, and it definitely showed some really good signs. In all of our attempts and runs, the early numbers were good. For I don't know how long, we got our butts kicked in the early half of the run, and it's just hard to make that up at the other end, so I feel like we're on the right track to picking up that performance in the early half and improving from there. The car definitely showed that in testing.

“We made a couple mid-3.80 runs that show promise going into the start of the season. For me, testing is about just knocking the rust off. But the team as a whole, we definitely tried some parts and pieces that we didn't run last year, so it was a beneficial test for sure.”

For 2013 NHRA Top Fuel champion Shawn Langdon and co-crew chiefs Jason McCulloch, Kurt Elliott, and Ronnie Thompson, this test session was about working through some issues that plagued the team last season. While Langdon and the DHL/CMR dragster team reached two final rounds last year, the team did not reach the winner’s circle, but they made offseason progress in healing what ailed the team last season. Their best testing run was 3.727 seconds at 293 mph. 

“We tested for four days but only got two because of the weather, but we were able to make a bunch of good runs,” Langdon said. “We were able to work on the things we haven't been doing well and were able to see some good results, so that was good. We were able to get our early incremental numbers to where we felt they should have been, so we had a very, very good test.    

“In drag racing, everything is momentum based; the quicker you can get up to speed, the faster you'll go at the finish line. So, our main focus has been trying to get the car to accelerate better down low and having the power level up with the right amount of clutch. We were able to do a couple of things we felt were missing last year.”

For all three of Connie Kalitta’s teams, if preparation plus planning does indeed equal success, the 2023 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series season could be fun to watch.

photos by Thomas Gaines