LANGDON REPEATS AT NHRA ARIZONA NATIONALS FOR 20TH CAREER WIN

Toyota makes 45th consecutive final round

CHANDLER, Ariz. (March 23, 2025) – After finishing runner up at Gainesville Raceway two weeks ago, Shawn Langdon bounced back to capture his first win of the 2025 NHRA season and a repeat at Firebird Motorsports Park. Langdon had to defeat his teammate, Doug Kalitta, to capture the Top Fuel Wally Trophy on Sunday. The victory by Langdon is the 20th of his career, as well as the second straight Top Fuel triumph for Toyota to begin 2025 after Antron Brown’s win in Gainesville.

Toyota has now also reached 45 consecutive NHRA event final rounds in either Top Fuel and/or Funny Car with the finals appearances by Langdon and Kalitta.

In Funny Car, J.R. Todd went the farthest of the GR Supra Funny Car group, advancing to the second round but no further. Bobby Bode fell in the first round, as did Ron Capps after his car body exploded and blew off his chassis, followed by contact with the wall. Capps was awake and alert and climbed out of his NAPA Auto Care GR Supra Funny Car under his own power.

The NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series is right back in action this weekend at In-N-Out Pomona Dragstrip next weekend.

Toyota Post-Race Recap
NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series
Firebird Motorsports Park
NHRA Arizona Nationals
Race 2 of 20

TOYOTA TOP FUEL FINISHING POSITIONS 

TOYOTA FUNNY CAR FINISHING POSITIONS 

*= Non-Toyota driver

TOYOTA QUOTES

SHAWN LANGDON, Kalitta Air Careers Toyota Top Fuel Dragster, Kalitta Motorsports

TF Final Result: Winner

Why were you the Kalitta Motorsports Dragster that won today?

“Brian (Husen, crew chief) and the team. I’ve been saying all along, Brian has turned this team into a bunch of superstars. All the credit to him. All the guys have done such a fantastic job. No mistakes, gave me such a great race car today. Knew going into the final, you’re running A.J. (Alan Johnson, crew chief, Doug Kalitta) and Doug (Kalitta). What are you going to do? You have to throw down and Brian said ‘we have to get this thing to go a low 3.70,’ and that’s what we did. We called our shot a little bit. Proud of the guys, everybody at Kalitta Air Careers. Toyota. It’s a win-win for Connie Kalitta (team owner). Most importantly, we put a smile on his face.”

RON CAPPS, NAPA Auto Care Toyota GR Supra Funny Car, Ron Capps Motorsports

FC Final Result: First Round

Take us through what happened there in that incident.

“We saw (Austin) Prock in front of us go 3.93 and Guido (Dean Antonelli, Capps’ crew chief) set us up to go 3.92, 3.93 and, (I) hit the gas, didn’t see Blake (Alexander), was running great like yesterday in the final round (of qualifying) and just happened so fast. To me in the car, it just smoked the tires a little bit and then, kaboom. Was much like Seattle last year in the sense that when the fire first happened, it was a convertible but there was a lot of fire in my face, and I was just trying to settle it down. Kind of bouncing around and then it wanted to go left. I was seeing John Force’s accident. We were the car behind him last year, we had a great view of it unfortunately, but it was weird, I didn’t have much steering, (it) was a hard left. I knew I was still traveling fast, so in my head, I knew it was not going to be good and I’m just picturing Force’s accident as I’m heading to the wall and just braced. I didn’t expect to be awake after hitting the wall and just braced the best you can. I hit the wall and then, I was still awake and there was still some fire, but I was like, ‘wow!’ Knew it hit, but got on the brakes and the shoots were already out. First off, NHRA safety did its job. Just watched the replay and the shoots were out like they should be. They said it pushed the wall back and they needed to repair it before the next cars went, and that’s a tribute to PBRC chassis, first off, but Guido (pause), one of the reasons I love Guido is he is over the top, not just with the car, but is safety-conscious with the car. So in this sense, we just had me fitted for a new seat and they put new head pads in. I wanted to get out of the car and thank John Force because unfortunately, Eric Medlen started this when we lost Eric, but John’s life was spared with (the safety improvements since) Eric’s accident. And then you fast forward, John’s life was probably spared a second time because of a previous accident and I for sure walked away from mine because of Force’s. Thankfully, we and NHRA have learned from the bad stuff that has happened. I’m interested to find out the G-Forces and speed I hit at, but thankfully, everyone’s been on top of safety. We’ll figure it out. Last year, we broke the brand-new car when it crashed and we went to the backup which almost won the race and a previous championship but now, we have a backup car that’s just as good as the first. Thankful we have such great partners with NAPA and Toyota and the guys will be ready for Pomona.”

About Toyota

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