Qatar Al-Anabi Racing driver Khalid al-Balooshi greets the fans during driver introductions prior to Sunday’s Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals near Denver, Colorado.
It was a difficult weekend in the “Mile-High City” for the Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel Team, the three-time and defending World Championship team owned by HE Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani. Both Khalid al-Balooshi and reigning World Champion Shawn Langdon lost in the first round of eliminations on a day when four of the top-five drivers in the standings went out in the first round at the 35th annual Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals yesterday, the 14th of 24 races that make up America’s 2014 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing season.
Langdon, who was ill over the weekend, was the No. 5 qualifier and raced Australian driver Richie Crampton in the first round. Both cars launched well, and Langdon was slightly ahead when the silver Al-Anabi car smoked the tires. Langdon pedaled the car, and it hooked up to the race track, but he was unable to catch Crampton before he reached the finish line. Langdon remains third in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings; he trails second-place Antron Brown by 164 and leads fourth place Tony Schumacher by 143 points.
“We made some good runs in qualifying, but the Al-Anabi team didn’t have that good a weekend,” Langdon said. “We just struggled to find the right tune-up here on the mountain with this high elevation. You have to change a lot of things on the car to run at this elevation, and we’ve been in the midst of changing so many things in our tune-up for normal elevations, that we were kind of guessing at some things up here in this high elevation. We just kind of miss-judged the track a little bit in the first round. We still have four more races to get things figured out before the Countdown (Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs) starts.”
Al-Balooshi had a very similar result. As the No. 8 qualifier, he raced No. 9 qualifier Brittany Force in the first round. The third-year Top Fuel driver, who left the starting line well before Force, was leading the race when the gold Al-Anabi car smoked the tires. Al-Balooshi pedaled the car and tried to track down Force who had problems late in the run, but he could not catch her, and al-Balooshi was eliminated. With the first-round loss, al-Balooshi drops one spot to ninth place in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings. He trails eighth-place J.R. Todd, today’s race winner, by 20 points and leads 10th-place Richie Crampton by seven points.
“It was a rough weekend in Denver; it is very hard on the cars here,” al-Balooshi said. “A lot of the people were good, but the No. 1 qualifier lost to the No. 16 qualifier. No. 1 in the points went out in the first round. A lot of people have been struggling. So the main thing is you need to forget what happened here in Denver and go to the next step when everything is back to normal. Next week in Sonoma, we can go back to working on the tune-up we have been working on for this year.”