Doug Kalitta said he wasn’t sure he had gotten his Mac Tools Dragster to the finish line ahead of Steve Torrence in Sunday’s Top Fuel final round of the NHRA Spring Nationals ahead of Capco / Rio Ammunition Dragster driver Steve Torrence.

With all the other tumultuous events of the day, he wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if Torrence had won for the second time this season and denied him his first. He had no clue whether he really had scored back-to-back victories here.

And it’s understandable that Kalitta was unsure. He and Torrence had clocked identical 3.81-second elapsed times on the Royal Purple Raceway strip. They were just .0196 of a second apart. That’s less than 10 feet, which might be hard to judge from inside a 300-inch-wheelbase race car traveling at 300 miles an hour or faster.

“It was a close race out there,” Kalitta said, relieved that he had repeated his victory here from last season and earned his third overall Houston triumph.

“It must have been about 800 feet, that thing [his car] just quit for some reason. Actually I didn’t realize I had won until I got to the end and turned around and came back [in the shutdown area],” he said. “So I was real happy . . . anytime you can get a win . . . Houston’s been good to us. It’s always good to get a win and get some momentum going. It just charges everybody up. It was just a real good day for us.”

Kalitta used a .036-second reaction time to win on a holeshot. He covered the 1,000-foot Baytown, Texas, course in 3.813 seconds at 280.60 mph to defeat the quicker and faster top-qualifier Torrence, the Kilgore, Texas, native who had hoped his 3.810, 306.81 would bring his first victory here near home.

The day ended well for Kalitta, but it had some rocky spots emotionally and performance-wise for the Ann Arbor, Mich., resident.

He owns a Ypsilanti, Mich.-headquartered airline that features cargo, passenger, and air-ambulance services. And he learned Sunday morning that one of his longtime sales team members, a dear friend named Mary Spinler, had lost her battle with cancer. So he dedicated his victory to her memory.

“She had struggled and been in a lot of pain. She’ll definitely be in a better place, with everything she had going. That was kind of a tough deal,” Kalitta said. “I’m honored to do it for her and her family.”

So he’ll remember this 83rd overall final round and 39th victory that pulled him into a tie with Kenny Bernstein and Antron Brown for fourth place on the all-time Top Fuel victories list.

“Kenny’s somebody that when I first started in drag racing, he was the guy to watch. He’s been one of my heroes, for sure. So it’s a great accomplishment for me personally, to tie him,” Kalitta said. “And the same with Antron – he’s one of the best in our field. Just real proud to tie him up today.”

He’ll remember it because he earned a nifty belt buckle to match the cowboy hat he received for winning at Dallas.

He’ll remember it because it was the first dragster win for Kalitta Motorsports since the organization partnered with Toyota.

And he’ll remember it because it gave him an automatic berth in the Top Fuel Traxxas Nitro Shootout.

“Getting in the Traxxas Shootout was huge for me. I always dread doing the raffle, the drawing thing,”  Kalitta said. He was referring to the fan-favorite-vote lottery which grants the final spot to a driver who hasn’t won to clinch any of the top seven positions for the $100,000-to-win bonus race. “It’s definitely nice taking the stress out of doing all that,” he said.

Kalitta called Traxxas “definitely a great partner with the NHRA Mello Yello Series” and said, “We’re happy to have them. It’s great to run for the 100-grand, to be locked in. Hopefully this will be our year. We’re qualified, and that’s half the battle. We appreciate what they do for us.”

But he also will remember this race day for the weird things that happened, as well.

“It was an interesting day with the drizzle,” he said, alluding to the rain delays Sunday – after the forecast for high winds and torrential rain for Friday and Saturday proved false. “The fans, they’re awesome here. They hung in there with everything that was going on.”

And then there were the rounds themselves, the ones in which he, as the No. 2 qualifier, got past Terry Haddock, Kebin Kinsley, Leah Pritchett (his lone non-Texas opponent), and finally Torrence.

Kalitta’s lights were unmemorable until the final round. Against Haddock in Round 1, he was .086 on the tree, but Haddock was .166 as Kalitta was an easy winner. Round 2 was his lucky one, he said. Kinsley red-lighted in a big way, with a -.312 reaction time, and that threw off Kalitta a bit.

“I heard him go and I double-stepped, for whatever crazy reason,” Kalitta said. “Then I was about halfway down the track and realized I wasn’t going to run a (3.)74.” That’s what he needed to beat to have lane choice in the semifinal round against Leah Pritchett. “So, he said, “I just shut it off at half-track. So that was a little strange. That was my lucky round, I figured.”

He beat Pritchett off the line in the semifinal round, but he wasn’t sharp with his reaction at .089 of a second. But she ended up with a blown engine as he won without trouble.

Then he said he felt lucky again to get past Torrence, who had qualified No. 1 for the fourth time this season and third in a row.

“Stevie and those guys . . . Steve Torrence, he’s tough to beat. With these guys and girls, anytime you get a win out here, it’s a good day,” Kalitta said.

“Each time you go up there, you never can tell what will happen. Whoever you run, you just kind of try to stay in your own lane and don’t really get too concerned about who’s in the other lane. That’s usually what I try to do. All the rounds on Sunday are big. But it was great Stevie and I made it to the final – and then we got by him,” he said.

“I kind of struggled all day, for whatever reason. I don’t know if I tried to relax a little more and focus [for the final round]. Whatever it was,” Kalitta said, “it was time to do it.”

He said, “We had a meeting this morning with all the guys, and we fired everybody up: ‘We won here last year. We really want to get this win.’ We felt good about the performance we’ve had all year. We were just hoping today was the day.”

Despite sprinkles, silly glitches, and sad news about a friend, it was Kalitta’s day.

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