With the 340mph mark broken, Langdon has a new target in his sights

Shawn Langdon and his Kalitta Motorsports team had their eye on a run surpassing the 340+mph mark in NHRA competition. But now that they’ve done it, Langdon is onto the next mission.

“It’s just something cool to put up,” Langdon said on Friday at Gainesville Raceway.

Langdon actually accomplished two records during pre-season testing at Gainesville. The first was a run of 3.621, followed the next day with a speed of 345mph. It is unofficially the fastest time and the fastest speed in NHRA history.

Both of those got attention. Langdon, however, was more concerned with what the team took away from the entirety of the time spent testing.

“Just what we’re able to put up on the scoreboard was the main thing,” Langdon said. “A little bit of a flex.”  

The runs were also a culmination of the work Langdon and his team have been putting in toward getting the scoreboard to go big.

“One big thing that Brian (Husen) really focused on at the end of last year was trying to get weight off of the car to get the car to accelerate early,” Langdon said. “So, my primary focus when I went overseas (racing) was to get on a program where I was losing weight, and the Sheik (Khalid bin Hamad Al-Thani) really helped me out with that a lot. He got me in with his people, and I had a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a physical therapist, and he gave me all the resources.

“So, we were able to get some weight off the car. I was able to get just over 20 pounds off me, and that’s with putting on muscle and doing it the right way. Coming into the season with how much we were able to get total – between the car and me – we felt like we had opportunities and the car was going to be better. And we made some good runs last year. So, we just tried to attack it that way, and took what the track provided us, and that was the result.”

Testing is one thing. Racing in anger is another.

Langdon enters 2026 off a runner-up effort to teammate Doug Kalitta, his second consecutive top-five finish in the points. The team won three races, including the milestone 1,000th for the Top Fuel class at the 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway, and was the runner-up three times. The overall win/loss record for Langdon last season was 36-16.

He also spent time as the points leader throughout the year.

“We’ve had a good car the last couple of years,” Langdon said. “I always felt like we had the best car in the regular season, and then just toward the end it wasn’t anything pinpointed on any one thing or anything in particular. It’s just the scenarios and the races, how it played out, the situations didn’t work in our favor, and we weren’t able to capitalize.

“Across the board collectively as a team, crew, driver, crew chief, maybe having a small amount of a biased opinion, but I feel like we have the best one out there. I think moving forward, now we have a good overall baseline, we have a good overall core to our team, and we’re getting into the intricacies of pinpointing the small details.”

It’s been 12 years since Langdon was at the top of the class as world champion. The quest for a second title is no different than the first, and doesn’t change as time goes on.

“I show up to the racetrack with the mentality of 100% in my mind to win that race, and I show up to win the championship at the end of the year,” Langdon said. “It is what it is. I don’t have any more will one race over another.”