ENNIS, Texas: The Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel Team, the two-time World Championship team owned by Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani, experienced two very different emotions this weekend at the just-completed AAA NHRA Fallnationals.
Persistent rain showers on Friday forced NHRA to cancel the first two rounds of qualifying, and with only two chances to make the field for the second of six NHRA Play-off races, the pressure was on in the second of six races comprising the Countdown to the Championship NHRA play-offs.
Silver Al-Anabi driver Shawn Langdon was brilliant in the first round of qualifying on Saturday. His 3.819-second effort at 321.04 mph was good enough to for his fifth No. 1 qualifier of the season and the 11th of his career.
In the first round of eliminations, Langdon blistered the northern Texas track with a 3.767-second pass at 325.53 mph and a first-round win over TJ Zizzo.
That run set the track record for elapsed time and speed.
Langdon went on to defeat Bob Vandergriff and Morgan Lucas before losing to Doug Kalitta in the final round of eliminations when the Al-Anabi car experienced some engine problems.
Langdon’s runner-up finish put him back atop the point standings, but he shares the points lead with Kalitta. The two lead third-place Spencer Massey by two points.
Langdon said: “We had a pretty good weekend in Dallas. The Al-Anabi team made some strong runs starting with the first qualifying session. The left lane was a little bit better than the right. We were able to keep lane choice most of today so we could stay in that left lane, but we got moved over to the right lane in the final.”
He added: “We just didn’t get it done in the final round, but we were able to get back to a tie for the points lead. We all want to win for Sheikh Khalid and the State of Qatar, but today was not the day. Things are looking good, and the Al-Anabi car is back. Our goal for the weekend was to get the points lead back. We were able to get a share of it right now, and we’ll go from there.”
The news was quite the opposite on the gold side of the Al-Anabi pit area.
Second-year Top Fuel driver Khalid alBalooshi and the gold Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Team battled hard but could not make a quick enough run.
The gold Al-Anabi car had problems on both qualifying attempts, and alBalooshi did not qualify for eliminations.
Last week in Charlotte, reigning NHRA Top Fuel World Champion Antron Brown did not qualify for eliminations making Brown and alBalooshi the only Top Fuel drivers in the play-offs to miss a play-off race so far.
By missing the race, alBalooshi dropped two spots to ninth place in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings.
He trails eighth-place Antron Brown by four points and leads 10th-place Steve Torrence by three points, yet the points are still very tight.
AlBalooshi is just 65 points off fifth place with four races remaining in the NHRA Play-offs.
The team will remain in Dallas to make some practice runs.
AlBalooshi said: “Things like this happen to every team at some time I know. Any driver can miss a race, but it happened to us at the wrong time and at the wrong race. The main thing is we need to take what happened this week and throw it away. We need to go to St. Louis and forget what happened this week and last week and have a better race in St. Louis.”
He added: “Our team has been working together, and we know we have one of the best cars in the show. We are going to stay in Dallas and test tomorrow so we can learn what is going wrong with our Al-Anabi car, fix it and be ready for St. Louis next week – I hope we can make Sheikh Khalid proud of our work next week.”
The Al-Anabi Racing team will be back in action from September 27-29 at the AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals in St. Louis, the third race of the Countdown to the Championship NHRA Play-offs.
THE PENINSULA
