Doug Kalitta, Mac Tools Top Fuel Dragster

2025 NHRA Northwest Nationals Recap:
Qualified No. 1; defeated Bye and Justin Ashley, lost to Brittany Force.

Doug Kalitta Career Stats: 637 events, 61 wins, 70 runners-up, 865 round wins, 69 No. 1 qualifiers.

Current Points Position:
2

Pre-Race Notes:

  • Doug Kalitta enters the Muckleshoot Casino Resort NHRA Northwest Nationals in second place in the NHRA Top Fuel point standings; he trails his teammate, Shawn Langdon, by 85 points and leads third-place Leah Pruett by 181 points with three races remaining in the regular season. Team Kalitta has been one-two in points since the second race of the season.
  • Kalitta captured his second win of the season in front of sellout crowds last weekend in Sonoma, Calif.; he now has seven wins at Sonoma Raceway – more than any other Top Fuel driver. Only John Force, who won eight Funny Car races there, has more Sonoma wins.
  • Kalitta’s Sonoma win was the 61st of his career, and with his next victory, he will tie Larry Dixon for third place on NHRA’s all-time Top Fuel wins list and 11th place in all categories.
  • The two-time and defending NHRA Top Fuel champion has two wins (Charlotte, Sonoma), four runners-up, three semifinals and three No. 1 qualifiers this season. With Kalitta’s wins and Langdon’s four wins, the Team Kalitta dragsters won six of the season’s first 11 races and competed in 41 of the 43 rounds of racing.
  • Kalitta has one win in five-career final rounds at Pacific Raceways. He has two No. 1 qualifiers including at last year’s race
  • Kalitta’s 61 race wins place him fourth all-time in Top Fuel wins and 12th overall. His 69 career No. 1 qualifiers seventh all-time. He is seventh all-time in round wins.
  • Kalitta is a two-time NHRA Top Fuel Champion (2023, ’25) and a member of the Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame.

Pre-Race Quotes:

“This time of the year is really fun because we’re all battling for points here at the end of the regular season before we get to figure out the Mission Foods Challenge points we earned in the Saturday races and get the points reset for the playoffs. We’re still quite aways behind Shawn and the Kalitta Air Careers car. We’d love to catch them, and we still have enough time certainly to do it; we just have to stay ahead of them somehow in these next three races. Anytime you can get to the final or win these things, it definitely builds confidence for all my guys and me. That’s probably the biggest thing. We’ll just keep the momentum going and just hope that we can keep qualifying first, going rounds and having a shot to win more of these things.

“Alan (Crew Chief Alan Johnson) certainly has his trained assassin over there with Brian (Langdon Crew Chief Brian Husen). Alan and Brian were together for a number of years; they won a lot of championships and a lot of races. It’s a hell of an opportunity for our whole team. Alan’s super proud of what Brian’s got going on over there; he’s doing such a good job so it’s going to be fun here for the rest of the season. It’s an opportunity for me and all my guys to see if we can get another championship this year.

“It’s really a dream come true for to be part of the effort we have going on with our two dragsters. We’re both trying to go rounds to beat these other guys. It’s a fun time for us right now for sure. We don’t usually make big changes at the end of a season; it’s just kind of a process. Alan builds a lot of the parts with his business, it’s nothing different from what everybody else out here runs, but we’re real fortunate to have him on our team for sure.

“We had some great runs in some great conditions in Seattle last year; it’s a cool place. They’ve done a lot with that track. It used to be one of those tracks where you weren’t sure what you were going to get when you got there, but now the track is good. We ran a 3.62 (3.62-second run) there last year, so it had plenty of grip, and their fans come out. As he continues to improve on that facility, he’ll be getting more and more fans. We’re looking forward to the weekend.”

Kalitta Photo Courtesy: Kalitta Motorsports

For Doug Kalitta’s 2026 race-by-race results, please click here.

The post Doug Kalitta Wants to Maintain Momentum first appeared on Team Kalitta Motorsports.

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