{"id":35295,"date":"2017-01-20T07:35:47","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T15:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=35295"},"modified":"2018-08-16T12:35:14","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T19:35:14","slug":"doug-kalitta-soaring-to-new-heights-in-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/doug-kalitta-soaring-to-new-heights-in-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Doug Kalitta Soaring to New Heights in 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Doug
Photos credit: Gary Natase<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Doug Kalitta may be the quiet sort, not as expressive as some of his fellow NHRA Top Fuel competitors, but it\u2019s his internal drive to win that makes him so deadly against all other drivers on the dragstrip.<\/p>\n

Many people don’t see that drive, but the Kalitta Motorsports Mac Tools team sees it every day, because Doug\u2019s a dedicated racer and leads by example by never finishing out of the top 10 in 19 seasons of racing.\u00a0 He has 42 wins in 87 final rounds, having finished second in the Top Fuel points four times (2003-4, 2006, 2016) along with the 1994 USAC National sprint car championship.<\/p>\n

\"Doug<\/p>\n

Add to that his ability as an accomplished pilot, and it\u2019s no wonder that everything he approaches, he does the right way.\u00a0 When he came over in 1998 to compete in the NHRA, he zeroed in on his competition, which would later become a who\u2019s who of drag racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a racer, it was motorcycles and then sprint cars for me; it\u2019s what we do to have fun,\u201d said Kalitta.\u00a0 \u201cI love the competition of what we do.\u00a0 I know when I first got into the sport I stepped into a good car and it was guys like Joe Amato, Kenny Bernstein, and Big Daddy (Don Garlits) I grew up with when those guys were actually still racing.\u00a0 It just added motivation for those types of opportunities, as well.\u00a0 We\u2019re just having fun and last year was a good year for us.\u00a0 Well, we\u2019ve put it all back together starting the year like we finished and just looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Doug<\/p>\n

Now Kalitta Motorsports is expanding their development program by designing and constructing their own cars, which Kalitta used in winning four races in 2016. He only has four races on his current ride, in which he won the Auto Club NHRA Finals last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year we ran our own in-house cars pretty much two thirds of the season and it seems like it\u2019s working for us,\u201d said Kalitta.\u00a0 \u201cWe have a few more folks working in the application area and we\u2019re fortunate to pick up some really good guys.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cConnie is always giving us what we need to try to improve on what we\u2019re doing.\u00a0 Jim Oberhofer is leading the charge, working with everybody to make it happen as well.\u00a0 We have a good team effort we have going on there at the shop.\u00a0 Yeah, it\u2019s nice to have control over it.\u00a0 You can control the expense; you can control anything you want.\u00a0 You can engineer what you want.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s definitely an advantage.\u00a0 With everything coming into the shop, you can control it a little more.\u00a0 Obviously, we\u2019re hoping for the same with the cylinder heads development and everything else that we\u2019re making just to improve on our program for all five of the teams.\u00a0 I feel it should be a good year for the Kalitta Motorsports effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Doug<\/p>\n

Now entering the 2017 NHRA Mello Yello season, Kalitta will be complemented in the pits by new rookie candidate Troy Coughlin, Jr. \u00a0The former Pro Mod driver from Ohio decided to move up to Top Fuel with full backing from his racing family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m actually real excited about it,\u201d said Kalitta, the NHRA 1998 Road to Future winner, which is considered the drag racing rookie title.\u00a0 \u201cHe comes from a racing family and he\u2019s raced, I would say, probably in just about in every class that’s out there.\u00a0 He has plenty of experience out there and his family is definitely supporting him.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t be more excited to have him as part of our team.\u00a0 We feel he\u2019s going to do a great job.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the last cars he\u2019s driven were a Pro Mod car, which there\u2019s not much down force on those things; he\u2019s dug himself out of trouble with that.\u00a0 I think he\u2019ll be fine in a Top Fuel car.\u00a0 We know it\u2019ll take some laps and we\u2019re looking forward to the opportunity to get him going.\u00a0 Rob Flynn (crew chief) knows all about running a team and has a great support group there and of course, all of our drivers, me included, will do whatever we can for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Doug<\/p>\n

The competition against Kalitta last year saw him is finish in what can be described as the closest finish in NHRA against his then Top Fuel teammate J.R. Todd in Atlanta, winning with a margin of victory being .0000.\u00a0 It\u2019s just thousandths of a second that can separate a team from point contender to oblivion in less than a blink of the eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the thing about it; any of the classes out there, the competition is all tough,\u201d stated Kalitta.\u00a0 \u201cEverybody is pretty much running the same parts and it really comes down to your crew chief and all the work the crews do.\u00a0 One good thing about drag racing is you\u2019re only good as your last round and it\u2019s incredibly competitive, hungry for every round that you run.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we do.\u00a0 It\u2019s definitely fun.\u00a0 It\u2019s a big rivalry out there and we\u2019re all trying to do well to win these things.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that\u2019s hard to imagine that you can measure cars going 300 mph at the finish, at least that accurate.\u00a0 We\u2019ve gotten everything freshened up and my guys are just as hungry as I am.\u00a0 That\u2019s the plan.\u00a0 We\u2019re going out there to put our best foot forward to it and it\u2019ll be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Doug<\/p>\n

To stay atop of the standings, vice president of operations Jim Oberhofer, as Kalitta\u2019s crew chief, and his assistant Troy Fasching are engineering another winning season. They recorded a 44-20 win\/loss round ratio last year, but again finished second in the Top Fuel points.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim-O has built a great team with the Mac Tools car and I have to admit Troy has worked with Jim for a number of years and has done an incredible job,\u201d said Kalitta.\u00a0 \u201cThey make a great team.\u00a0 He runs the day-to-day on that thing and has the opportunity to focus more on the issues that he\u2019s trying to work through in every situation.\u00a0 In addition, working with the other crew chiefs, so, it\u2019s a good balance.\u00a0 He has done an incredible job over the years tuning these things and we\u2019re both really excited to get the year started again.\u00a0 We\u2019ll just go out there and try to win rounds and win races.\u201d<\/p>\n

Testing at the Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park begins on Feb. 4-5, 2017, in Phoenix, with the kickoff of the NHRA Mello Yello season starting at the Auto Club Raceway at Pomona for the running of 57th<\/sup> annual Circle K Winternationals on Feb. 12.<\/p>\n

\"Doug<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doug Kalitta may be the quiet sort, not as expressive as some of his fellow NHRA Top Fuel competitors, but it\u2019s his internal drive to win that makes him so deadly against all other drivers on the dragstrip. <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":35296,"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":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[511,5128,547,4730,41,7,1632,5129],"class_list":["post-35295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-doug-kalitta","tag-gary-natase","tag-jay-wells","tag-kalitta-motorsports","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-troy-coughlin-jr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/335-DougKalitta-Friday-Charlotte1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-9bh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35295","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=35295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35303,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35295\/revisions\/35303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}