Shawn Langdon knows there’s no margin for error now.
With three races left in the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season, the 2013 Top Fuel world titleist is chasing both his teammate Doug Kalitta and Justin Ashley in a tightening Countdown to the Championship battle — and he’s running out of time.
Langdon delivered a much-needed performance Friday night at Texas Motorplex, racing to the provisional No. 1 qualifying position with a 3.684-second, 338.88-mph blast in his 12,000-horsepower Kalitta Air 25th Anniversary dragster. The run earned him a $15,000 “JEGS Friday Night Live” bonus and his first potential No. 1 start of 2025, but it wasn’t enough to make up ground in the standings.
He picked up three qualifying bonus points for the day — but Ashley collected four, widening the gap by one point. Langdon entered the Texas NHRA FallNationals 127 points behind Kalitta and remains mired in third, needing not just quick runs but race wins to stay in the title fight.
“We know our team’s capable of it,” Langdon said. “It’s just been certain situations throughout the year where we got behind here and there. Brian [Husen, crew chief] is doing a really good job with the car. It’s just circumstantial that we haven’t been qualifying where we felt we should be.”
Friday’s pass, Langdon said, came with added pressure. As one of the first cars down the track in the latter session, his team had no reference runs from which to work. “It’s always tough being first in the session because you go lay a run down and it basically shows what the track’s capable of, so everybody else can make adjustments,” he said. “Typically, you don’t see someone go out second pair and lay down a run like that. I was a little bit surprised. I figured someone would go 66 or 67, but fortunately they didn’t.”
What mattered most to Langdon wasn’t the surprise, it was the precision. “Brian felt like he could go 3.68, and that was his target, and that’s what it ran,” he said. “So it gives me a lot of confidence.”
That confidence, he added, comes from knowing his crew has regained control of the car’s behavior. Husen, he said, has “got a handle on it. Sometimes you think you’ve got a handle on the car and it doesn’t do what you want, and sometimes it’s vice-versa. Tonight, I felt like he’s been trying to focus hard on qualifying better. He’s made a couple of comments through the last few races about needing to qualify stronger. That was a good run.”
Langdon knows every point matters now. Entering the 18 of 20 events, he trails Kalitta and Ashley, who have been stellar through the first three races of the playoffs. To stay alive, he said, his Kalitta Motorsports team must deliver near-flawless weekends from this point forward.
“For us, where we’re at — third behind Doug and Justin — we have to start here,” Langdon said. “We knew that coming in. We’ve got to make good runs and we’ve got to get a win. Doug’s been on a good run, and when Doug and AJ [Alan Johnson] get in the zone, they’re very tough to beat. And obviously Justin, he’s a great driver, and Mike and Tommy [Ashley’s crew chiefs], when they get that car going down the track, they’re tough, too.”
With only Las Vegas and Pomona remaining after Dallas, Langdon’s mindset has shifted to one of simple necessity. “We just need to go win,” he said. “We’ll go to Vegas and then keep going around. We’ve got to get a couple wins in there.”
Langdon, one of drag racing’s most-disciplined veterans, has learned to rely on experience when the championship pressure peaks. His 2013 Top Fuel title and multiple Super Comp and sportsman championships were built on staying calm when others tightened up.
“The first couple of times you go through it, it’s always the fear of the unknown,” Langdon said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know how you’re going to react to what happens or what doesn’t happen. You don’t know the questions you’re going to get asked. It’s the fear of the unknowns because you don’t really know.”
Now, he said, he approaches it differently. “I’ve been through it before with various cars,” he said. “Honestly, I just have the mentality that I come out here and do my job — hit the gas on time and give my team the best opportunity that we can. That’s my only focus.”
Langdon said he’s learned to control what he can and ignore what he can’t. “It’s going to be what it’s going to be,” he said. “I just make sure that I’m good on my end, that I’m prepared, and that I give 100%, which I know I always do as soon as I put my helmet on.”
Friday’s run was the kind of performance he’ll need more of if he hopes to climb back into contention. Teammate Doug Kalitta’s steady consistency has set a high bar, while Ashley’s ability to collect incremental points has kept pressure on both Kalitta team drivers.
Still, Langdon’s focus isn’t on the math, it’s on execution. “You just have to go make good runs,” he said. “You can’t worry about the rest of it. We’ve got a car that’s capable of winning, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
Shawn Reed followed Langdon’s pace Friday with a 3.685 at 333.56 mph, while defending event winner Ashley was third with a 3.688 at 338.02 mph. Those three were separated by just four-thousandths of a second — a margin that underscores how fine the line is between gaining and losing ground in the Top Fuel standings.
Langdon’s run might not have narrowed the points gap, but it reminded everyone that the Kalitta Air team remains in the hunt. “It gives me a lot of confidence because it shows [Husen] has a handle on the car,” Langdon said. “Now we just have to keep going rounds and go get some wins.”
Qualifying continues Saturday at noon CDT as Langdon looks to lock down the No. 1 position — and, more importantly, position himself for a long-overdue victory on Texas soil.
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