CONCORD, N.C. – After more than a year of trying, Shawn Langdon finally notched his first Funny Car triumph during Sunday’s NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway.
Steve Torrence (Top Fuel) and Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle) also registered victories on Sunday afternoon under clear blue skies.
Langdon, driving the Global Electronic Technology Toyota Camry for Kalitta Motorsports, ran down Robert Hight during the final round of Funny Car eliminations. Hight got off the line first while Langdon left last of the four final round competitors. Hight beat Langdon to the eighth-mile, but Hight slowed as he neared the finish line and Langdon got their first.
At the finish line Langdon’s 4.125-second run at 305.08 mph was enough to give him the victory over Hight’s slowing 4.159-second pass at 242.89 mph. Langdon, the 2013 Top Fuel champion, made the move to Funny Car competition prior to the start of the 2018 season.
Langdon is the 17th different competitor to earn victories in Top Fuel and Funny Car.
“The guys I had to go through today, the talent we had (to beat) in second round and in the finals, it was the best in the class,” said Langdon, who also earned his first victory in Top Fuel competition at zMAX Dragway in 2012. “To get this win is very gratifying. An .069 (reaction time) in the final and to leave fourth, that just shows how good these guys are and how hungry these other guys are to get the win.”
Also involved in the final round were 16-time Funny Car champion John Force, who crossed the line in third, and Matt Hagan, who finished fourth.
Torrence, the defending Top Fuel champion, got the monkey off his back with an impressive run to victory in the final round of eliminations. At the wheel of his own Capco Contractors dragster, Torrence annihilated fellow finalists Clay Millican, Terry McMillen and Leah Pritchett.
Millican beat Torrence away from the tree with a .019 reaction time compared to Torrence’s .061 reaction time, but Torrence quickly chased him down and rocketed to a 3.778-second pass at 323.19 mph. Millican ended up second after slowing to a 4.035-second run at 310.48 mph. McMillen and Pritchett followed in third and fourth, respectively.
“We’ve had a lot of success at zMAX,” said Torrence after his third-straight Four-Wide Nationals victory at zMAX Dragway and the 28th overall of his career. “At first I was pretty open about not being a fan of the four-wide, but I have retracted that statement. I enjoy it. We do really well here.
“We could race all of them here if you guys didn’t care,” Torrence joked.
Hines’ second victory this year in Pro Stock Motorcycle competition came after he was seemingly eliminated in the semi-final round.
A malfunction in one of the tree’s at the starting line forced Hines’ semi-final quad to be run again. Hector Arana attempted to stage his bike in lane three during the the semi-final run, but the stage light in his lane never lit up and he was unable to complete a run as a result.
Angie Smith and Hector Arana Jr. were originally believed to be the two riders who advanced to the final from the quad that also included Arana and Hines, who left the line too soon and was initially disqualified.
“I didn’t know what the heck was going on,” Hines admitted. “I thought somebody in lane three didn’t know where they were or they were moving back and forth. Next thing I know we’re all staged and I just turned the throttle before anybody else and the next thing I know the red light comes on.”
However, after NHRA officials investigated the issue in Arana’s lane they found a power supply problem caused the tree to malfunction. As a result, officials opted to re-run the group. In the second attempt, Hines and Arana Jr. advanced to the final while Arana and Smith both left the line too soon and were disqualified.
In the finals, Hines rocketed to his 50th Pro Stock Motorcycle victory thanks to a 6.831-second run at 198.17 mph. His Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson teammate Eddie Krawiec was second with a 6.858-second elapsed time. Arana Jr. and Ryan Oehler were third and fourth, respectively.
“I was thinking Eddie better not drive around me, he better not drive around me,” Hines said. “He’s been known to do that to a lot of people. Luckily I got there by a hundredth.”