Sometimes, when an NHRA Top Fuel season begins, hiccups can occur almost from the first pass. That hasn’t been the case for Shawn Langdon in 2026.
Langdon, driving for Kalitta Motorsports, won his third race of the season out of six total, claiming the title at the 26th annual Gerber Collision & Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals presented by PEAK Performance on Sunday.
Langdon clocked a 3.775-second elapsed time at 335.90 mph to defeat Antron Brown’s 4.225-second lap at 206.48 mph.
“We definitely had a big turnaround from qualifying,” said Langdon, who qualified No. 9. “The first couple runs, just trying to go out there and make good runs. And Brian [Husen, his crew chief] realized that we had to tame some things down in the car. And we got into a situation where Q4, we just needed to get qualified a little better. We weren’t trying to get eight, nine, knowing Doug would probably end up one, but we ended up there. So, we ended up having to run Doug second round. Wasn’t ideal. But at the end of the day, we had to get some information for our car and make a good run.”
This was Langdon’s third win of the season and second in a row as he also won the Southern Nationals in Valdosta, Ga., on May 3. His first victory of 2026 came at the Arizona Nationals on March 22.
Langdon has now captured 25 national-event wins in his career, and his 23rd in Top Fuel. Langdon also won two Wallys while driving a nitro Funny Car for Kalitta Motorsports in 2019.
On Sunday, Langdon ousted Shawn Reed, Doug Kalitta, Josh Hart, and Brown.
“With the clouds coming in and out, there just was a lot of last-minute changes. And Brian’s gotten really good lately, just off his gut feeling, just making those last-second little changes,” Langdon said. “But you can kind of tell that they were having two different gameplans. And one was for when the sun was out and one for when the cloud cover was there. They were able to adapt when they needed to and provided a great race car for four rounds.”
It’s been a whirlwind month for Langdon. He went 345 mph – faster than any driver in the sport – on May 1 at the Southern Nationals, won the event, and then claimed a victory at Route 66 for the first time.
“I mean, the sport just goes in waves. And you have to capitalize when you can and your car’s running well,” Langdon said. “Fortunately, right now, we’re able to capitalize and just make good runs when we need to and make appropriate runs when we need to as well. So, it’s just kind of one thing is all the guys have been doing a great job putting the car together. There’s no mistakes. And Brian’s been doing a great job making last-minute calls and putting a great tune-up in the car and not making any mistakes there. We’re just going out there and just making runs and fortunately, the results have fallen in our favor.”
Langdon acknowledged that he and Brown are good friends who bracket race a lot together, and he knew it would be a battle for the Wally.
“Well, bracket racing, I cook all his meals,” Langdon said. “But here, no. Here’s a little more business. It’s a little more fun. But, yeah, I mean, obviously, running Antron, we’ve been great friends for a long time, talk on the phone all the time, share a lot of information, and a majority of our stuff’s just kind of talking bracket racing and stuff like that. But it’s always good racing Antron. It’s always going to be a good race, good straight-up race. You know what you’re going to get over there. And they got a good car, so you got to make a good run.”
Langdon’s record 345-mph pass at the Southern Nationals earned an unusual amount of attention from media outlets around the country. After that pass and Sunday’s victory, Langdon is trying to keep things in perspective.
“Nothing really different for me. I mean, we did a couple … podcasts, some stuff. It did get a lot of media attention through some outlets, which is good,” he said. “I feel like we need to keep pushing that, though. I mean, those are some great outlets to be in, some great people to be in touch with.
