(By Phil Burgess – Photo: NHRA)
Doug Kalitta’s championship-winning final round at the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals elicited a roar of cheers from longtime NHRA fans who have seen him compete for 26 seasons and nearly 590 events without a championship.
Kalitta a six-time championship runner-up 2003, ’04, ’06, ’16, ’19, and ’20, joined his late cousin, Scott, son of team owner Connie Kalitta, and J.R. Todd as world champions underneath the Kalitta Motorsports banner whose history in the sport dates back to the early 1960s.
And while all of Kalitta’s second-place finishes in the standings have been cruel, perhaps none was tougher to swallow than in 2006 when he led the points coming into the final round with Tony Schumacher needing a miracle final-round victory to get around him. Ironically. It was his current crew chief, Alan Johnson, calling the shots for Schumacher, and the pass that he dialed up, which has become known simply as “The Run,” was a shocker, a performance that was quick enough to win and reset the national-record – which at the time carried bonus points – but not too fast to be backed up by his previous runs. Seventeen years later at the same track, it all came full circle in the same lane that Schumacher beat him from.
Kalitta had a slow start to the season and didn’t reach a final-round until midseason, then put together runner-ups in Denver and Seattle, to boost his hopes, but still entered the Countdown to the Championship in sixth place.
Kalitta’s fates took a wild turn at the playoff opener at Maple Grove Raceway where his dragster blew a rear tire, damaging the chassis. The team had to revert to their backup car, which did not have the same wind-cheating canopy as the primary car, but the change oddly worked out as he defeated Steve Torrence in the final round.
The team opted to stick with the secondary car and then won the Betway NHRA Carolina Nationals in Charlotte, N.C., to take over the points lead.
The team struggled through a trio of second-round losses and entered the season finale in second place behind Torrence and just ahead of Leah Pruett. The trio raced into the day before Pruett defeated five-time world champ Steve Torrence and Kalitta beat Justin Ashley to set up the titanic final-round battle for the crown and Kalitta’s ultimate and overdue coronation.
Phil Burgess | NHRA National Dragster | Photo: NHRA
