JOLIET, Illinois: After fixing some significant mechanical issues in New Hampshire, the Qatar Al Anabi Racing Top Fuel Team entered last weekend’s 17th annual O’Reilly Auto Parts Route 66 NHRA Nationals here with high hopes, but the race showed that the three-time world champion team — owned by H E Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani — still had some work to do.
The O’Reilly Auto Parts Route 66 NHRA Nationals was the 12th of the 24 races that make up America’s 2014 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing season.
Al Anabi driver Shawn Langdon was the No 12 qualifier.
He made his best run of the weekend — a 3.795-second effort — to snatch a win over No. 5 qualifier Steve Torrence.
In the second round, Langdon’s silver Al Anabi dragster smoked the tires and Brittany Force won the round.
With this result, Langdon remains third in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings — but he now trails second-place holder Antron Brown, who won this weekend’s race — by 128 points.
“The Al-Anabi team is still fighting some clutch issues,” Langdon said while pointing out the difficuilties faced by the team.
“We thought we had figured it out after we made that great run in the first round but we are still fighting a couple of issues,” he said before adding:
“We aren’t quite where we need to be. We’ll do our homework during the week and hope we have it all figured out by the time we get to Norwalk next weekend,” he commented.
The other Al Anabi driver alBalooshi was the No 8 qualifier.
He raced JR Todd in the first round of eliminations and the race was a battle of two tire-smoking cars.
Unfortunately for the Al Anabi team, Todd reached the finish line a fraction of a second before alBalooshi and won the round.
As a result, alBalooshi dropped one spot to eighth place in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel standings.
“The Al Anabi team did not have its best weekend in Joliet,” alBalooshi said.
“We made some good runs and in the runs that were not ok, we saw some good things in some of the numbers,” he said.
“So that is good news. Other than that, I need to forget everything that happened this weekend and get ready to race in Ohio next weekend. I hope next week will be better for our team,” he said while hoping for improvement.
The Al Anabi Racing team will be back in action on July 4 at the eighth annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio.
THE PENINSULA
