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Qatar Al-Anabi racing Top Fuel driver Shawn Langdon races in the second round of eliminations at the AAA Texas NHRA Fall Nationals in Ennis, Texas just south of Dallas. Langdon is 41 points out of the points lead with four races remaining in the season. PICTURE: Gary Nastase |
For the third consecutive race, Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel Team, the two-time, defending NHRA Full Throttle Top Fuel World Championship team owned by His Excellency Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani, earned the No 1 qualifier with silver Al-Anabi driver Shawn Langdon.
It was Langdon’s fourth No 1 qualifier of the season and the fifth of his career. His teammate, Khalid al-Balooshi, qualified seventh at the just completed AAA Texas NHRA Fall Nationals, the 19th of 23 races making up the 2012 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series and the second of six races making up the Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs. After struggling in Friday qualifying, Langdon made two dazzling passes on Saturday to earn No. 1 qualifier honours. The silver Al-Anabi car was the quickest in each of the Saturday qualifying sessions.
On Sunday, Langdon defeated Scott Palmer in the first round before facing event winner Antron Brown in the second. Both cars launched well, but both also spun the tires turning the race into a tire-smoking battle among two championship contenders. Brown got to the finish line a tenth of a second before Langdon and won the round. With his first-round win, Langdon recorded the fastest speed of the entire weekend, a 323.50 mph effort. Langdon dropped one place to fourth in the NHRA Full Throttle Top Fuel point standings. He trails third-place Tony Schumacher by 17 points and leads fifth-place Morgan Lucas by 42 points. He trails co-points leaders Antron Brown and Spencer Massey by 41 points with four races remaining in the season.
“The Al-Anabi car was great in qualifying yesterday, and we made a good run this morning to get to the second round where we ran Antron,” Langdon said. “We knew he would run well, and we just tried to go a little too fast on a hot race track. Both cars smoked the tires, and he got us. We know we leave Dallas a couple of rounds out of the points lead with four races left, but we saw last weekend in Charlotte that things can change quickly so we’ll go to St Louis next weekend and be ready to go when we get there.”
The Al-Anabi Racing team will return to action this coming weekend, Sept. 28-30, 2012, at the inaugural AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals at Gateway Motorsports Park near St Louis, Missouri.