Stop us if you have heard this verse before in the 2026 NHRA season – Kalitta Motorsports earns a Top Fuel victory.
The verse rang true again Monday when Shawn Langdon captured the title at the rain-delayed inaugural Dodge NHRA Great Lakes Nationals in Martin, Mich. It was the opening event of the Countdown to the Championship for the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series.
In the 15 races this season, Langdon has a class-best six wins, followed by his teammate Doug Kalitta’s four. This was the team’s fifth national-event Top Fuel victory in a row. Kalitta won Sonoma, Calif., Seattle and Brainerd, Minn., and Langdon won the prestigious 72nd annual Cornwell Quality Tools NHRA U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis.
Langdon clocked a 3.664-second elapsed time at 346.15 mph to defeat Spencer Massey’s 3.764-second run at 327.75 in the final round.
“It just goes to show it takes everything, right? You go to a facility, and you have a facility like U.S. 131 that takes a lot of pride in their facility,” Langdon said. “It’s a beautiful facility. You come here, the concrete is awesome, straight, flat, and then you get some good conditions, and really anything’s possible. It all started with coming here and coming to a great track, and then you have … my guys have been doing such a great job – and I’ve over and over talked about that, how good my team has been all year long and given me a great race car – and they just continue to do that. And Brian [crew chief Husen], they put it together perfectly, and then Brian makes perfect calls, last-minute adjustments he races smart, and I felt like we were able to do that today.
“We knew that it was going to be good, but to be able to do that for four runs today, which is awesome – proud of the guys. Coming off the Indy win, come here, get another win. Happy for Brian to be able to get a win at his home track as a crew chief. There’s just a lot of good things going on, good vibes. This was a big race for the Kalitta Air people. We had a lot of people out this week, and obviously with the rain kind of hindered a little bit of that, but Connie [team owner Kalitta] was able to come out this weekend, see some runs … able to see a smile on his face, which is the end goal. So, yeah, all in all, A-plus weekend.”
It was a world-record-setting weekend for Langdon.
Langdon and the Kalitta Air Careers team had a spectacular day, recording the lowest elapsed time of the season and the fastest speed in NHRA history. Langdon defeated Maddi Gordon, Will Smith, teammate Doug Kalitta, and Massey.
In the first round, Langdon’s 3.652-second pass at 344.04 mph was the quickest elapsed time of the season, but the 2013 Top Fuel champion and Husen, a native of Grand Rapids, Mich., were just getting warmed up. They defeated Smith with a 3.686-second effort at 342.73 mph in the second round, but the biggest fireworks came in the semifinal showdown with Kalitta. Langon posted a 3.663-second elapsed time at 346.95 mph to shatter the 345-mph speed record he set in Adel, Ga., in May. The Kalitta Air Careers team put the exclamation point on the weekend reaching the finish line at 346.15 mph in the win over Massey in the final round.
With elapsed times of 3.652, 3.686, 3.663 and 3.664 seconds along with speeds of 344.04, 342.73, 346.95, and 346.15 mph, one drag racing insider called Langdon’s day, “the best sustained performance in the history of Top Fuel.”
Langdon’s six wins this season have come at: the Arizona Nationals in Phoenix, on March 22; the Southern Nationals in Adel, Ga., on May 3; the Gerber Collision & Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals in Joliet, Ill., on May 17; the NHRA Potomac Nationals in Mechanicsville, Md.; the U.S. Nationals (Sept. 7) and the Great Lakes Nationals (Sept. 21).
“I give big credit to Brian for the final because I know he was really, really wanting to go for it. He was talking about it all day, that the track’s there to be able to set a record,” Langdon said. “We were able to do it on the speed, but we were just trying to race situations and trying to race smart, not beat ourselves. Because there’s always that little bit of, you know, 50/50 shot if you really go for it. So, he raced what he felt was comfortable and gave me a great race car, and I just tried not to do anything to mess that up.”
Langdon now has earned 28 national events in his career, 26 of which are in Top Fuel. Langdon also won two Wallys while driving a nitro Funny Car for Kalitta Motorsports in 2019.
Langdon won his lone NHRA Top Fuel championship in 2013 driving for Al-Anabi Racing. That season he won a career-best seven races.
With five races left in the season, Langdon is in a tug-o-war with his teammate and reigning champ Doug Kalitta to see who will be crowned the 2026 kingpin. Langdon’s victory Monday allowed him to leave Michigan atop the NHRA Top Fuel standings. He leads Kalitta by 11 points heading to NHRA’s inaugural national event Friday through Sunday at Rockingham (NC) Dragway.
“Internally we know what the team’s capable of. We have a great team from top to bottom. Earlier this year we were able to go to five straight finals, get three straight wins, and then we had a couple races where we just couldn’t get out of the second round,” Langdon said. “And for no particular reason, just some things just didn’t fall our way, and just lost some good races. But that’s just how the sport goes.
“We know we have a great opportunity, but we’re excited about the win, but we’re not going to dwell on it too much because come [Tuesday] morning, it is back at work, get ready for Rockingham, N.C. We know Rockingham is another track that we don’t really have much information on. Big credit to my team because the three races we’ve gone to this year, new facilities, where you have no information on, I felt like we’ve had hands-down the best car. And here again, we won three races this year on brand-new tracks [to the NHRA tour]. So, it just goes to show these guys do a great job, and they do a lot of homework.”
The Rock is far from new, and NHRA competition. It hosted the non-points Winston Invitational from 1989-98. Every team, including the red-hot Kalitta Motorsports operation, will have to map out a game plan for success.
“We’ll have the guys out there checking the track, running the profile on it. But, like I said, to be able to go 346 mph, you have to have the air, and you have to have the track. So, if we have the air and the track, then good possibility you’ll see that [go faster than 346 mph]. That’s going to be tough [to reach 350]. I mean, I wouldn’t have thought 345 mph was, and I wouldn’t have thought 347 was, but, I mean, maybe.
“I just think that we have a very well-prepared race car. And it goes from all the guys on the race team, from top to bottom. I just feel like everything is double-, triple-checked, everything.” Langdon said. “I get in the race car, and I don’t ever doubt anything, and I never second-guess anything. I know the guys; they do a fantastic job with the car. It starts with the guys putting together the car perfectly.”
