ENGLISHTOWN, New Jersey: One year ago at the Toyota NHRA Summer Nationals some 45 miles from New York City, Khalid AlBalooshi was the No. 2 qualifier and advanced to the final round.
Yesterday in Englishtown, AlBalooshi remained strong for the Qatar Al Anabi Racing Top Fuel team, the three-time and defending NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel World Champions owned by H E, Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani.
AlBalooshi is sixth while defending race winner Shawn Langdon is 14th after the first day of qualifying for the 45th annual Toyota NHRA Summer Nationals, the ninth of 24 events that make up the United States’ 2014 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season.
AlBalooshi and the gold Al Anabi team were stellar in late-afternoon qualifying session posting a 3.792-second effort at 320.66 mph.
The third-year Top Fuel driver was No. 1 after the first session. In the yesterday night’s session. AlBalooshi was in the final pair because he was No. 1 in the first session, but five cars had run quicker than his afternoon run dropping him to sixth. The gold Al Anabi team made a very aggressive run and was clearly going for the No. 1 qualifier.
Unfortunately, it was too much power and AlBalooshi’s gold Al Anabi car overpowered the race track and smoked the tires; he was unable to improve his position and is sixth at the mid-point of qualifying.
“Our team is very good at this race track,” AlBalooshi said. “We made a very good run in the first round; it was a good job by Jason (crew chief Jason McCulloch) and all of the crew.”
Langdon was on his way to a brilliant run in the first round of qualifying when the blower belt broke, and the engine could no longer perform.
Langdon’s 4.022-second run was still good enough for seventh. In the evening session, the silver Al Anabi car was once again on a great run when the car smoked the tires just shy of half track. Because several drivers were able to improve their times in the night session, Langdon dropped back to 14th at the middle of the qualifying process.
“In the first round, we were on a great run that would probably have been the low qualifier, but we broke the blower belt at half track,” Langdon said.
“On the night run, we just missed the setup a little bit and smoked the tires a little before half track.”
Langdon, however was hoping to do well in the following stages of the event.” We’ll try again on Saturday,” he said.
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