It is 125 miles from Ypsilanti, Michigan, to Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, but to Doug Kalitta it seems like a trip around the corner.

The Kalitta Motorsports driver considers Summit Motorsports Park to be his home track, and he celebrated his so-called homecoming with a victory over Antron Brown in the Top Fuel final round at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals.

“We have Milan Dragway up near us, but it really isn’t big enough for the NHRA to do anything there,” Kalitta said. “This is our home track and it was great to have so many family and friends here. Even my mom showed up and she’s only shown up one other time, so she really doesn’t come too often. All this family and all the friends here…it just doesn’t get much better than that.”

It didn’t get much better than Kalitta this weekend. He qualified at the top of the sheet before marching through the rounds of eliminations with relative ease. He won in a breeze in the first round against No. 16 qualifier Chris Karamasines when The Greek posted a sleepy .430 reaction time. He then dusted a tire-shaking Steve Torrence in the second round when Torrence could not put together a clean pass.

His toughest race before the final was a semifinal match-up against the surprising Clay Millican, who reverted to his IHRA days in Norwalk and put a pair of heavy hitters, Spencer Massey and Larry Dixon, into their trailers.

Kalitta got past Millican with an .032 induced 3.849 at 322.19 miles per hour against Millican’s .088 induced 3.879 at 315.64.

The final round, the 82nd of Kalitta’s career, was tight. Brown had the advantage at the tree, .046 to .069, but Kalitta got by him on the track with a 3.823 at 322.34. Brown, who was slowing at the top end of the track, clocked a 3.918 at 307.79.

“We ended up changing a couple engines out prior to the semis,” Kalitta said. “It was a scheduled engine change, then we broke a stud so we had to take that motor out and put another one in. We were kind of thrashing back there ourselves.

“Fortunately the guys on J.R.’s car, and some of the Funny Car guys, came over and we got everything caught up. We pulled it off and there was really never any doubt in my mind because I’ve seen how those guys work when they’re thrashing.”

For the final round, Kalitta was happy to have lane choice. He put Brown in the left lane, the lane that was giving some of the Nitro teams trouble during eliminations.

“I was certainly happy going into the final that I was in the right lane,” Kalitta said. “I wasn’t watching it much with the other runs and didn’t see whatever was going on and I’m sure the track was pretty even. I watched a couple of runs and it seemed like cars were getting down both lanes with no problem.”

The win was Kalitta’s first career victory at his home track, and took place in front of his mother, who was attending just her second-ever race.

“My sister actually roped her into coming out and I think she had fun,” Kalitta said. “I’m going to have to tell her she has to come out more often because we won with her here. She watches on TV quite a bit but I think she’ll start coming out a little more.”

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