{"id":19489,"date":"2015-10-16T10:52:10","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T17:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=19489"},"modified":"2015-10-16T12:08:13","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T19:08:13","slug":"kalitta-racings-j-r-tood-ready-to-rewrite-nhra-countdown-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/kalitta-racings-j-r-tood-ready-to-rewrite-nhra-countdown-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Kalitta Racing’s J.R. Todd Ready to Rewrite NHRA Countdown History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JRIt’s been a tough first half of the NHRA Mello Yello Countdown to the Championship for Kalitta Racing Top Fuel driver J.R. Todd.\u00a0 Breaking the huddle from the Michigan headquarters to get the second half kicked off, his Red Line Oil team heads south for the upcoming AAA of Texas NHRA Fallnationals at the Texas Motorplex this weekend.\u00a0 For Todd and company, the all-concrete facility looks like the perfect place to make a strong rally, having won\u00a0there in 2008.<\/p>\n

After finishing second last year in the post season laurels, Todd has struggled in 2015, and he\u2019s not the only one that wants to change some things around.<\/p>\n

What the entire Top Fuel field is seeing this year is perfection in motion.\u00a0 Antron Brown and his Don Schumacher Matco Tools team are 12-0 in the playoffs and seem to be only getting better, showing a potent championship stride winning at Charlotte, St. Louis, and Reading one after the other.<\/p>\n

Todd had a final round appearance against Brown in Charlotte, but with only 24 round wins available, his two first round losses following his final sent him back to sixth, 251 points back, just that quick.<\/p>\n

\"JR<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMore than anything, it\u2019s got my focus and makes me anxious to get back to the track and stop it,\u201d said Todd, this year\u2019s Seattle champion.\u00a0 \u201cIt reminds me of when we won Dallas in 2008 when Tony [Schumacher] had history going.\u00a0 Now, we have to stop Antron\u2019s streak.\u00a0 \u00a0Looking at the championship picture, it\u2019s going to be a tall order to contend for that.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, all we can do is go out there and win the last three races to see where that puts us.\u00a0 It\u2019s not over, but I feel at the same time a lot of us are racing for the third spot.\u00a0 The top two have definitely pulled away with a pretty big gap.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to be tough to catch either one.\u00a0\u00a0 You can\u2019t give up; you have to give it your best.\u00a0 I know we have a car capable of winning every race we show up to each weekend.\u00a0 It gives me all the confidence in the world as a driver just knowing I can go out there and do my job.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve got a hell of team behind me that\u2019s capable of going out there and turning on four win lights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JR<\/a><\/p>\n

Following Brown is Tony Schumacher, behind by 94 points in second, but it\u2019s the stretch from third to tenth that gets Todd primed to go forward.\u00a0 He\u2019s 57 out of third, but he\u2019s right in the mix of seven other drivers.\u00a0 It\u2019s only an 80 points spread from Connolly in 10th<\/sup> to Brittany Force, who holds down third, 194 out of the lead.\u00a0 Ahead of him are Richie Crampton, Larry Dixon and Force.\u00a0 J.R. can\u2019t be still any longer because right behind him is Shawn Langdon and Doug Kalitta, respectively, only four and eight points away from him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know we can catch those three cars in front of us,\u201d smiled Todd.\u00a0 \u201cIt would be nice to contend for a championship and maybe with some luck we can keep the No. 2 on the wing again for next year.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to take winning races and have to have some help from the top two cars going outearly.\u00a0 The two Schumacher cars have stumbled onto something that works for them extremely well so far in the Countdown.\u00a0 Now they have been running well all season long, to where we\u2019ve been up and down lacking the vital consistency needed right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cReading, for example, was a fluke with only one qualifying session.\u00a0 We got a bad spot in qualifying, drawing Schumacher first round.\u00a0 We were one of the only cars to get down the track and we were out run by them. (3.741 to 3.776)\u00a0 Honestly, there\u2019s not much more we could have done there.\u00a0 As a driver, I\u2019m not changing my approach going into the last three races.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to go out there and try to be as aggressive as possible.\u00a0 What forever reason it seems you go out there, rip the tree, and cut a good light and then you have Antron who is just a tick better than you are.\u00a0 That shows there is improvement for all of us.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got to do whatever it takes to make myself better.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Dallas this weekend, the temperatures should be hovering in the 80s. \u00a0Maybe the weather could be an equalizer for Todd; however, this Texas race especially will hold so much promise and a ton of disappointment by Sunday evening for the competitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, after seeing the weather, I would say the National Record is safe for this weekend in Dallas,\u201d Todd said with approval.\u00a0 \u201cHey, at the Texas Motorplex last year, we qualified well there and set the track record and went to the finals so we should be in good shape.\u00a0 When we get to Vegas and Pomona, you don\u2019t know what is going happen.\u00a0 We have to gather as many qualifying points and those add up.\u00a0 Low ET in the top three in the qualifying rounds and take as many points away from Antron.\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s going to be tough to do and has been, so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JR<\/a><\/p>\n

The AAA of Texas NHRA Fallnationals will air live on ESPN3 at 12 noon EDT on Sunday, October 18.\u00a0 Qualifying highlights are on ESPN2 at 4 p.m. later in the day with the Finals showing at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J.R. Todd is preparing for the challenging road ahead, but plans to make a comeback.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,3399],"tags":[1461,82,424,907,511,3213,251,608,81,575],"class_list":["post-19489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-nhra","tag-2015-nhra-mello-yello-drag-racing-series","tag-antron-brown","tag-brittany-force","tag-dave-connolly","tag-doug-kalitta","tag-jr-todd","tag-larry-dixon","tag-richie-crampton","tag-shawn-langdon","tag-tony-schumacher"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/featuredimage3.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-54l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19499,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19489\/revisions\/19499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}