After his runner-up finish at the season opener in Pomona, Mac Tools-sponsored driver Doug Kalitta won the Amalie Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Auto-Plus Raceway in Gainesville Florida.

“The thing has been running good, “Kalitta said of his Top Fuel dragster. “Jim and Troy and all the guys are working real hard on that thing and I’m just real happy to get the win out here today.”

Kalitta qualified in the fourth spot with a 3.819 second elapsed time at over 321 miles per hour, pairing him up against Brittany Force in the first round of eliminations.

The fueler, tuned by Jim Oberhofer, defeated Force and then faced teammate David Grubnic in the second round. Aided by a .050 second reaction time, Kalitta surpassed Grubnic’s low elapsed time of the round (3.800 seconds) with a margin of victory of just two hundredths of a second.

In the semi-final round against Steve Torrence, Kalitta posted a pass of 3.856 seconds which was enough to get by Torrence’s tire smoking 7.663 second run. The win matched him up against the Matco Tool team of Antron Brown for an all tool distributor final round.

In the final round, Kalitta's Mac Tool dragster went right down the race track, defeating the Matco dragster of Brown with an elapsed time of 3.830 seconds to a losing 5.106 seconds.

“I feel very fortunate to get by those guys again,” said Kalitta. “It seems like it goes back and forth and I wish it was a little more on the Mac Tools side.  So, we will see how well it goes this year.”

The win is Kalitta’s third at the Gatornationals which ties him with the legendary Don Garlits for Gainesville wins and with Cory McClenathan for sixth in all-time NHRA Top Fuel victories.

Kalitta is the new current point leader headed into Las Vegas for the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals.

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