KENT, Washington: It was a solid Seattle weekend for the Qatar Al Anabi Racing Top Fuel Team, the three-time and defending World Championship team owned by H E Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani.
Khalid AlBalooshi followed last weekend’s California win by racking up points this weekend and reigning World Champion Shawn Langdon reached the semi-finals.
Langdon’s silver Al Anabi car was solid all weekend. The team qualified third and made strong runs throughout the event.
In the first round of eliminations, Langdon posted the quickest run of the entire weekend with a 3.787second pass to defeat Clay Millican.
In the second round, he faced AlBalooshi in a rematch of last week’s final round in Sonoma, California. This time, Langdon got the better of AlBalooshi in their 10th career head-to-head matchup and advanced to a semi-final race against Doug Kalitta, the points leader.
Kalitta defeated Langdon and went on to win the race.
Still, it was a solid Al Anabi weekend with both teams in fine form with two races remaining in the regular season.
“It really was a good day for the Al-Anabi team,” Langdon said.
“We had a good race car up to the semi-finals. One focus point we’ve been working on is getting our car to have fast numbers early in the run. We’ve been able to achieve that and we’re getting a safe tune-up now. It’s just a matter of fine-tuning it a little bit down the track. The Al Anabi car is really fast, we just misjudged the track a little bit in the semi-finals while trying to make a good run against Doug Kalitta. All in all, we still had a good weekend. We qualified well and had a good car on race day. So we’re pretty excited to get to Brainerd in two weeks.”
AlBalooshi was the No. 6 qualifier. He defeated seventh-place Brittany Force in the first round before losing to Langdon, in the second round of eliminations.
One week ago, AlBalooshi won the race and took his second win of the season in Sonoma, California.
AlBalooshi remains eighth in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings but he now trails seventh-place Brittany Force by just one point. He leads ninth-place Richie Crampton by 47 points. The top-10 drivers in points qualify for the Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs.
“It was a good weekend for the gold Al Anabi team until the second round on Sunday,” AlBalooshi said.
“I don’t know why our car dropped a cylinder at the start of the run; it surprised us. When I finished the run, I asked Jason (crew chief Jason McCulloch) what happened and he told me, ‘Balooshi, I don’t know why’ but I know he will keep working on the car to see what’s going on. But we had one of the best cars all weekend. All weekend we went down the track every time with no problems. We have our car back, so that is good for the rest of the season.”
The Al-Anabi Racing team will be back in action on August 15-1 at the 33rd annual Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Minn.
THE PENINSULA
