​Shawn Langdon's time on the sidelines is officially over. 

Langdon, 34, and a past NHRA Top Fuel champion, has joined Kalitta Motorsports as part of an expansion into a three-car team starting later this month at the NHRA Springnationals outside of Houston, Texas. 

Global Electronic Technology serves as the primary sponsor for the new team in 19 of the remaining 20 events this season. 

“I’m really excited about the opportunity to drive the Global Electronic Technology dragster,” Langdon said. “It is awesome to see new companies like Global Electronic Technology come in to drag racing, and I am excited to be a part of it.” 

Mother Nature wasn’t terribly cooperative Monday for Ashley Sanford at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
 
Threatening skies, tricky winds, and a sudden 11-degree drop in temperature played havoc with the tune-up for Bobby and Dom Lagana. Despite that, Sanford, the NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster driver, took a huge stride toward transferring her competition license to Top Fuel.
 
Sanford, of Fullerton, Calif., drove the Lagana Family’s Nitro Ninja Dragster to a 3.879-second elapsed time at 319.22 mph on the 1,000-foot course as one of her required full passes at 4.50 or quicker and 240 mph or faster.

John Force Racing is pleased to announce a partnership between the 18-time champion NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series team and Parker Hannifin, the global leader in motion and control technologies.  

Parker Hannifin’s ParkerStore will adorn JFR’s three Funny Cars, as well as its Top Fuel dragster, as an associate sponsor for the remainder of the 2017 season.

Ian Tocher understands the most impactful photos he's ever shot in two decades of covering drag racing will never be published, and he's fine with the process. 

Tocher's shakes his head at the irony of the last photos he took on April 9, 2016, being labeled as impactful. The veteran photojournalist, who is also Senior Editor of Drag Illustrated and contributor for CompetitionPlus.com, was critically injured when he was struck by Ronnie Davis' errant race car during qualifying at Rockingham Dragway. Davis later succumbed to injuries sustained in the crash, while Tocher spent months in the hospital rehabbing from a severe pelvis injury, a back injury and a severely broken left leg. 

Race Winning Brands, Inc., a portfolio company of Kinderhook Industries, LLC announced the acquisition of Diamond Pistons and Trend Performance, two manufacturers of high-performance engine components for the automotive performance market. The acquisition of the Diamond Pistons and Trend Performance brands represents the first add-on acquisition for RWB and Kinderhook's 45th automotive related transaction. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
 
Headquartered in Mentor, Ohio, Race Winning Brands is a leading manufacturer of performance and racing pistons and related engine components for the automotive and powersports performance markets. The Company markets its products internationally through several highly recognized brands including JE Pistons, Wiseco Performance Products, K1 Technologies, Innovate Motorsports, and ProX Racing Parts.

 
Lest anyone worry that Sunday’s nitro sweep for his organization’s 299th and 300th NHRA victories might prod Don Schumacher into retiring, he can rest assured. The megateam owner said he’s going nowhere and that his powerhouse racing operation is here to stay.
 
“I have no plans or thoughts to exit the sport or for DSR to exit the sport. So we’re going to be here for a long time,” Schumacher said Sunday afternoon at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Matt Smith confirmed to CompetitionPlus.com he will be filling in for his father and world championship driver Rickie Smith at the ADRL Spring Drags April 7-8 at Rockingham (N.C.) Dragway.

Matt will be driving his father’s Pro Mod ZL1 Camaro and he will be a teammate to Jonathan Gray.

When you're a Race Director, you quickly learn to expect the unexpected. 

What Rich Schaefer, NHRA Division 2 Director, experienced last Sunday broke new ground in his experiences during the divisional event at South Georgia Motorsports Park, located outside of Valdosta, Ga. 

Top Dragster racer Casey Spradlin, after winning the Top Dragster title, left fluid on the track necessitating a clean-up. The clean-up crew was busy grooming the track when all of a sudden, without warning, what appeared to be a Cessna prop plan dropped out of the sky, and landed in the shutdown area. A surprised crew, including Schaefer, could only watch with jaws ajar, as the errant plane taxied in proximity to the support vehicles, made a u-turn and then took off. 

Funny Car driver JR Todd knows the fast way down the dragstrip at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis, and he lives just a few miles from the fabled facility.
 
But he never experienced it quite like he did Tuesday, starting with discovering a 10-turn circuit staked out in the paved lot where the Kalitta Motorsports team parks his DHL Toyota Camry at NHRA races.
 
Todd had hosted Red Bull Global Rallycross driver Alex Keyes at the previous weekend’s Denso NHRA Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. There he introduced the 19-year-old Dreyer & Reinbold racer to a blast of eardrum-splitting, nitromethane-laced 10,000-horsepower and the eye-popping sight of a race car zipping the length of more than three football fields in less than four seconds.

A year ago, Tommy Johnson Jr. had a career-best finish of second place in NHRA’s nitro Funny Car point standings.

Now, the veteran driver is proving he is going to be a championship contender again in 2017.