KALITTA MOTORSPORTS: A NECESSARY REEMERGENCE
Excellence is something the Kalitta Motorsports team expects every time it competes in an NHRA event.
Since 1959, with drag racing legend and team owner Connie Kalitta at the helm, Kalitta Motorsports has won five world championships and over 50 national event titles while drag racing under five different sanctioning banners. Kalitta Motorsports is based in Ypsilanti, Mich.
From 2007-2009, however, the team’s Top Fuel dragster driven by Doug Kalitta struggled to get on track.
The perennial championship contender only won two races in that span, posting a best finish of eighth in the point standings, last season.
Excellence is something the Kalitta Motorsports team expects every time it competes in an NHRA event.
Since 1959, with drag racing legend and team owner Connie Kalitta at the helm, Kalitta Motorsports has won five world championships and over 50 national event titles while drag racing under five different sanctioning banners. Kalitta Motorsports is based in Ypsilanti, Mich.
From 2007-2009, however, the team’s Top Fuel dragster driven by Doug Kalitta struggled to get on track.
The perennial championship contender only won two races in that span, posting a best finish of eighth in the point standings, last season.
“Last year was tough for us just because we didn’t have the financial ability I guess really to go and change some things that maybe we wanted to change,” said Jim Oberhofer, Doug’s crew chief. “At the beginning of the year, we were just trying to survive and stay out there. As most people who know us, with Connie and his business, Kalitta Air, as long as business is good with Kalitta Air, the racing program always seems to flourish. Last year, we took a little bit of a step back at the beginning of the year, and we were just concentrating on staying out there and surviving. At the end of the year, Connie’s business started picking up quite a bit and that kind of works its way over here to Kalitta Motorsports and it allowed us to get some of the things we needed to make our team a much more competitive team.”
This year, through the first two races – the Winternationals and Arizona Nationals – Kalitta’s Top Fuel team has experienced a revival.
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Doug Kalitta has back-to-back runner-up finishes at each event and is second in the points chase, five points behind Cory McClenathan.
“The first thing is that you start with a great team,” Oberhofer said. “We have a great team with team owner Connie Kalitta and a great driver in Doug Kalitta. We also have a great support system at Kalitta Motorsports with all the employees and crew members we have. We just really have a positive group of people working for us. Granted, two races does not make a year, but we feel a lot better about what we were doing right now compared what we were doing this time last year.”
Doug concurred with his crew chief.
“Toward the end of last year, the guys started to find some consistency with our setup,” Kalitta said. “Jim (Oberhofer) and (assistant crew chief) Troy (Fasching), and all of my guys we’re just trying to stay after what we learned at the end of last year and fortunately that’s continuing to show dividends here after the first two races. We’ve been qualifying better, which has helped as well.”
At Pomona and Phoenix, Kalitta qualified fourth and second, respectively.
Oberhofer says Kalitta Motorsports also made some philosophical changes late last year to reverse its fortunes.
“At Kalitta Motorsports, we have always been big on running 90 percent nitromethane, so when NHRA went back to allowing us to run 90 percent we would run that all the time,” Oberhofer said. “We never really thought much about changing that percentage. In 2008, we had a lot of great success with Hillary Will’s car and we thought we could take that into 2009 and apply that to Doug’s car. In 2009, we started out all right because we won Pomona and we had a halfway decent showing at Phoenix, but after that point things changed. Our motor just constantly seemed like it was out of control. We kept chasing the power curve, and we would change all these things, but we would not change the nitro percentage. We always felt we would leave the nitro percentage as a constant.”
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LEARNING FROM LOSS
The struggles at Kalitta Motorsports had back in 2007 became secondary when tragedy struck the team two years ago. The on-track death of Scott Kalitta, Connie’s son, and a two-time NHRA world champion on June 21, 2008, shook Kalitta Motorsports to its core. Doug is Connie’s nephew.
Scott Kalitta's Funny Car, traveling about 300 mph, burst into flames and crashed at the end of the track during final qualifying for the Lucas Oil SuperNationals Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ. Kalitta, 46, died a short time after being taken to the Old Bridge Division of Raritan Bay Medical Center in Englishtown, NJ.
“There’s really no words to describe Scott’s accident, it was just devastating to this team,” Oberhofer said. “Not only from the standpoint, that we lost Scott Kalitta, the championship Top Fuel driver and great Funny Car driver, but we lost a part of our family.
“I think Connie stepped up more than anybody will ever know after Scott’s accident. He stepped up and showed us what he was all about. He not only held Kalitta Motorsports together, but he held his company, Kalitta Air, together because the people at Kalitta Air were just as devastated as we were. Connie’s way of doing business is that everybody is like family to him. He put everybody on his shoulders and he made things better. He knew we needed to focus on how we can keep this (deadly) crash from ever, ever happening again. He was just unbelievable. He wanted to continue racing and continue to put good cars together and have a Kalitta Motorsports presence at the drag races. Without him, we would not be here. He forced us to learn and go out there and do what he feels Scott wanted us to do and that’s field a competitive race team. All the credit in the world goes to Connie. No one would have blamed him if he would have said he was done and wasn’t going to race anymore (after Scott’s death). But, that was never an option for him.”
Since Scott’s tragic wreck, the NHRA has had both Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars race to 1000-feet, instead of the traditional quarter-mile (1,320 feet).
“In addition to improving the performance of the cars, we have taken a lot of pride in making sure the cars are safe,” Doug said. “We work with a group of owners, and we communicate quite often with each other about the different issues we face out there, safety issues. We’ve never skimped on any parts or anything we feel we need to have to make the car safe. We’re fortunate from that aspect to be involved with Connie and all of his knowledge about the sport and how the sport has progressed. It was a very difficult time for us (when Scott died), and we’re just trying to make Scott proud that we’re still out there doing good and we’re are up front winning races.” - Tracy Renck
“We had changed everything and I talked to Alan and he runs a lower percentage of nitromethane and he’s very comfortable with that,” Oberhofer said. “Believe me when I tell you to have to go to Connie Kalitta and tell him I would like to drop the nitro percentage two percent, he wasn’t into it and he didn’t think it would be as important as I felt it would be or what Alan thought it would be, but he was OK with us doing it. We started doing it at Memphis (the next race) and all of sudden the car became more controllable. We could never get the car under control. It seemed like if you looked at it wrong, the car would smoke the tires, and that changed at Memphis. Then, over the winter I changed our fuel system around to run the Alan Johnson slide valve system and we changed a couple of other things to make our car a little bit more competitive. I also felt real good after we tested at West Palm (in January).”
Oberhofer credited the longstanding relationship Kalitta Motorsports has with Johnson as a key factor in improving the performance of the entire Kalitta Motorsports team.
“We have some great relationships with people that we value and one of great relationships that I know we value a lot is our relationship we have with Alan Johnson and his company Alan Johnson Performance Engineering,” Oberhofer said. “Connie and Alan have always had a tremendous amount of respect for each other, and they’ve always got along very well. When we were struggling in 2007 with our team, Alan helped us in just allowing us to buy parts that we needed to help update what we had and make us a more competitive team. Last year, he offered to help us with our Funny Car team and that helped make our Funny Car program a lot better in 2009. It also worked its way into the dragster program. The nice thing about Alan is that we have a strong relationship with him and we can just go up and talk to him ask him questions and he’s always been good enough, whether it has been to me, my brother (Jon), or to Connie Kalitta to answer those questions. I really think that’s what has made our team a lot better. I feel Alan is responsible for the way the top dogs in the Top Fuel class run these days. His fingerprint is on a lot of Top Fuel cars out there and to have that ability to go to Alan and ask a question and get an answer is huge in my book.”
This Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Gainesville, Fla., Kalitta Motorsports donated a dragster which will bear Darrell Gwynn’s famed Coors Extra Gold Special colors that Doug will pilot at the 41st annual Tire Kingdom NHRA Gatornationals. A win, in those colors, would be phenomenal.
“The desire to win has always been here at Kalitta Motorsports, and I feel good about the combination we have right now,” Oberhofer said. “I feel going to Gainesville we have as good a chance to win that race as anybody.”
Doug running the Coors dragster is a tribute to Gwynn’s second consecutive Gainesville victory at the 1990 Gatornationals, twenty years ago.
“Gainesville is a good track that has provided some good performances,” Doug Kalitta said. “Hopefully, it will be on the cooler side, so the conditions will be good and I think we have a good chance of winning the race. That was one of the theories behind running (Gwynn’s) car at Gainesville because he won that race 20 years ago with that car. Hopefully, some of that luck will rub off on us. That would be huge for us and Darrell’s family and his whole organization if we could win.”
The special dragster not only will honor Gwynn’s on-track achievements, but it also will recognize the Darrell Gwynn Foundation’s ongoing work to provide education about spinal cord injury prevention, offer support to those afflicted by spinal cord injuries and debilitating disease, and raise funds to help find a cure.
Gwynn was paralyzed from the chest down in an on-track accident just one month after his 1990 Gatornationals victory.
Doug also is pleased his team is back and running as good as anybody on the circuit. From 2001-2006, Doug won 29 races and finished no worse than fourth in the points chase, including being second in 2003, 2004, and 2006.
“It’s really nice knowing that you have a good chance of winning every time that you show up and race,” Doug said. “It makes everybody’s attitude right and hopefully we can keep it going the rest of the year. The goal has always been the championship and winning races, and hopefully this will be a good year.”
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