BROWNSBURG, Indiana: Less than a month after clinching the third NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel World Championship for the Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel Team owned by Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani, key team personnel will attend the Doha Goals Forum in Qatar.
The Doha Goals Forum is the premier platform for world leaders to advance social initiatives through sport.
Team owner Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani, team manager Alan Johnson, Dubai driver Khalid alBalooshi and 2013 NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel World Champion Shawn Langdon will all attend.
Sheikh Khalid and Johnson will participate in today’s think tank on the role of private equity in sport.
AlBalooshi will serve as an ambassador for some 400 students in attendance at the Doha Goals Forum while Langdon will participate in Wednesday’s session focusing on extreme sports.
Founded in 2009, the Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel Team was created to raise international awareness of the State of Qatar via the visibility created by a world-class race team winning races and championships.
From the team’s inaugural season, it has done just that.
In 2009, the team’s Top Fuel dragster won five races and finished second in the season standings just two points out of the World Championship.
In the next two seasons, the team would win 20 Top Fuel races and claim both the 2010 and ’11 NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel World Championships. The following year, the team changed drivers with 2011 NHRA Pro Mod Champion Khalid alBalooshi of Dubai and third-year Top Fuel driver Shawn Langdon joining the team.
AlBalooshi won a race and finished 11th in his rookie 2012 season, and this year, he won again and finished eighth. Langdon finished a career-best fourth in the 2012 point standings, and that performance set the stage for 2013.
The just-completed NHRA season was a dream-come-true for Langdon. He won the season’s first race in Pomona, California just a few miles from Mira Loma, California where he grew up. He would go on to win eight races, lead the point standings most of the season and clinch his first-career NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel World Championship at the same California race track at which he won the season opener. It was a monumental achievement – the Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel team won its third World Championship in the last four years, and Sheikh Khalid’s vision took yet another step forward.
Off the race track, the team conducted an internship program in partnership with Texas A&M University in Qatar’s Education City to provide real-life Motorsports experience for students in engineering-related fields.
Students split their time between Alan Johnson Performance Engineering in California where race engine components are designed and built and the race track where the components are used to create 8,000 horse power engines that produce speeds of more than 330 mph.
The team partnered with Qatar Foundation International in hosting students from Chicago’s Lindblom Math and Science Academy, a leader in both Arabic and science studies, who traveled to Qatar to participate in a cultural exchange program with Qatari schools while focusing on water and marine conservation. Qatar Foundation International (QFI), LLC, is a US-based member of Qatar Foundation (QF) dedicated to advancing QF’s mission and H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser vision of connecting cultures and advancing global citizenship through education. Al-Anabi Racing operates out of multiple locations in both the United States and Qatar.
The Peninsula
