MESA, Ariz. — Apollo 11 took only 4 days, 6 hours and 45 minutes to rocket to the moon; Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes in four years; workers spent 14 years carving Mount Rushmore; and the Great Pyramid of Giza was a 20-year production.
But it took Doug Kalitta 26 years — more than a quarter century — to earn the NHRA Top Fuel championship. Specifically, it took him 587 races, and in the drag-racing world, that headline from the In-N-Out Burger Finals in Pomona, Calif., ranked right up there with “Man Bites Dog.”
It finally was the moment Kalitta stopped being Buzz Aldrin to Neil Armstrong, Alydar to Affirmed and Clay Aiken, Katherine McPhee and Adam Lambert to “American Idol” winners.
The longtime Mac Tools dragster driver, who operates Kalitta Charters for air cargo, passenger flights and medical transport missions, could pilot a Learjet by age 21.
He has transported a whale — a whale! — from San Diego to Orlando in his airplane; he has shuttled thoroughbred horses from Churchill Downs to Pimlico to Belmont Park; and he has used his air-ambulance service to reassure distraught parents by fetching their college-age kids from Mexico after a spring-break decision got out of control.
On the ground, Kalitta had 51 NHRA Top Fuel victories heading into this year’s season finale, but the Top Fuel championship had always eluded him.
He stood there at the top-end, waiting in 2006 to see if Tony Schumacher could win the final round of the season finale and set a national record that awarded 20 points to ace him out of the title. And Schumacher did.
That marked the third time Kalitta had finished second in the standings. He did so again in 2016, ’19 and ’20. He set records, won races and led the points for weeks on end – but time after time that championship would go to someone else.
Kalitta easily could have adopted “Someone Else’s Star” as his theme song. Its lyrics include: “I guess I must be wishing on someone else’s star. It seems like someone else keeps getting what I’m wishing for …”
Perennially to see that “big trophy” inches beyond his fingertips wasn’t fair. He already was a national champion — 1994, USAC sprint cars.
Kalitta was pigeonholed as “the NHRA driver with the most victories without a championship.” And in the beginning, he shrugged it off: “It’s not life or death. It’s just drag racing” and “I just ran the wrong guy.”
But year after year, especially at Countdown time, surely it became just plain annoying to hear the question about his repeated bridesmaid status. He said the topic is “definitely one of those subjects like getting your teeth pulled. You know, you don’t really feel like sitting around and talking about it — at least I wouldn’t.”
Kalitta defeated gutsy Leah Pruett in the final round at Pomona to break the cycle, to silence the talk, to clutch that “big trophy.” That Sunday afternoon he also stopped four-time champion Steve Torrence, virtual season-long points leader Justin Ashley and three-time titlist Antron Brown.
He wound up winning three of the six Countdown races, at the beginning and at the end.
Moreover, he did it with tuner Alan Johnson, Schumacher’s crew chief when Schumacher beat him in 2004 and ’06.
Kalitta became the seventh driver Johnson has guided to a championship, joining Gary Scelzi (3), Schumacher (5), Larry Dixon (1), Del Worsham (1), Shawn Langdon (1) and Brittany Force (1). This was the 13th crown for Johnson.
“Throughout the year,” Kalitta said, “I’m thinking, ‘Man, I just have to get a win. If I get a win, that’ll take a lot of pressure off Alan as my crew chief.’ That would definitely not look good on your résumé, having Alan for two years and not winning a race. We had to work for it. And, fortunately for the guys, they really pulled it together and we started going down the track and started making good runs and getting win lights. What a blessing having (Johnson) on my team.
“To be one of the guys that has won a championship with him as crew chief is what I have dreamt of. And winning it with Connie (his uncle and team owner Connie Kalitta) here is extra-special, as well.”
With that, Doug Kalitta stepped from the shadows, the shadows of that label and of his cousin, Scott Kalitta, the Top Fuel champion in 1994 and ’95, and of his uncle Connie.
“My cousin Scott won this thing a couple of times, so I’ve always grown up in his shadow, trying to accomplish what he accomplished. So it was definitely on my bucket list to get a Top Fuel title,” Doug Kalitta said. “It’s definitely a big relief.”
Connie Kalitta, a drag-racing pioneer, has long been one of the sport’s more colorful characters with his swashbuckling, his audacity in racing and off the track and his commitment to drag racing. And his nephew said, “I heard all the stories back in the day with Connie.”
Now, Doug Kalitta, the 2023 NHRA Top Fuel champion, has his own amazing story.
This story appeared in the Dec 6, 2023, edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
