The Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals didn’t go as Team Kalitta had hoped.
In fact, almost everything that could’ve gone wrong, did.
The bad luck began during the second round of qualifying on Saturday, April 1, at the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip in California.
Team Kalitta’s Funny Car driver J.R. Todd was lined up against 16-time champion John Force and in the split second after the Christmas tree turned green, it appeared that Todd would beat Force to the stripe. But halfway down the drag strip, Force lost control of his BlueDEF Chevrolet Camaro, the car crossed the center line and made hard contact with Todd’s DHL Toyota Supra.
Neither driver was injured, but the incident left both teams scrambling to make repairs.
With the chassis and car body sustaining considerable damage, Team Kalitta switched to Todd’s backup car for the remainder of the weekend. However, there was still another call left to make.
With the next stop on the NHRA schedule being the 4-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Team Kalitta had originally planned to stay out West between events, rather than travel home to the race shop in Ypsilanti, Mich. But the heavily-damaged chassis on Todd’s primary car provided an unavoidable issue, as the team desperately needed to make repairs before the 4-Wide Nationals.
DHL Funny Car team members with their just-repaired primary car, left-to-right, are: crew chief Todd Smith; crew members Isaiah Taylor, Jaime Gandara, Chris Forton, Tanner Meyer, James Couture, Jacob Wilder, Mike Morris and Matt Mays. (Kalitta Motorsports photo)
With that goal in mind, Team Kalitta borrowed a trailer and enlisted two members of their hospitality staff to drive the chassis to Precision Built Race Cars in Indianapolis.
By the time Todd was gearing up for eliminations the next morning, the chassis was hundreds of miles away.
The second problem arose during the first round of eliminations on Sunday.
Todd staged in the left lane, while Alex Laughlin lined up opposite him. As the nitro-burning machines thundered down the strip, again, it looked as if Todd was in control and en route to a win light.
But just past the midpoint, the DHL Funny Car exploded, spewing parts into the air as the car body tore to shreds. Miraculously, Todd walked away unscathed.
Without question, Team Kalitta was in quite a predicament.
The team swung into action on Monday morning, with the entire crew making the 2,221-mile trek from Pomona, Calif., to the Kalitta Motorsports shop in Michigan.
Their weekly to-do list looked something like this: Prepare a new backup chassis, get two Funny Car bodies ready for competition, pick up repaired primary chassis from PBRC and prepare the primary car for the 4-Wide Nationals.
“This effort could not have been successful without every member of the DHL Funny Car team, our shop employees, our hospitality staff pitching in, as well as Precision Built Race Cars,” said Chad Head, Team Kalitta’s general manager. “It took everyone to accomplish this incredible task in time.”
On Tuesday morning, the DHL Funny Car team was on the road to Las Vegas — hopefully, with the worst of it behind them. Understandably, Todd, who won the 4-Wide Nationals at The Strip in 2019, is anxious to reward the team’s efforts with a victory.
“I think we have some of the hardest working guys in all of motorsports,” Todd said. “I hope I can pay them back really soon with a Wally. That’s about the only way to pay them back for all their hard work to this point.”
Todd will make his first appearance in the repaired primary car during the Toyota Supra Showdown at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Friday at 2:25 p.m. (PDT), then will move on to the Funny Car qualifying session at 2:30 p.m. (PDT).
Keyword: After Winternationals Trouble, Team Kalitta Needs A Win