Dirt
#Effective
Shawn Langdon brings
world-championship talents
to Kalitta Motorsports
By Josh Hachat
36 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Anabi closed up shop, to Don Schumacher Racing,
where he joined in 2015 and raced all of 2016
before Schumacher parked the car before the
start of 2017. For a driver as talented as Lang-
don, who has 14 career wins, it’s not the path he
had in mind. But there’s also nothing he regrets
about the journey that has unfolded during his
Top Fuel career.
“There’s different ways to look at that situation,”
Langdon said. “I don’t look at it as, ‘Why me?’ I’ve
been very fortunate and lucky to race with team
owners and legends of the sport. I can put on my
resume that I’ve raced with Morgan Lucas Racing,
Alan, Don and now Connie. The way I look at it
is I pinch myself everyday because I’m out there
doing what I love to do.
“I wake up every morning thinking about drag
racing and I go to bed thinking about drag racing.
Through all the steps I’ve just been very, very
lucky. I don’t take any bad out of this. In any situ-
ation, I’ve been able to learn from it and become
a better driver or a better businessman. It’s been a
continual learning process and I wouldn’t change
anything about it.”
Issue 122
S
hortly after being hired to
drive a third Top Fuel car for Ka-
litta Motorsports in early April,
Shawn Langdon visited the team’s
shop in Ypsilanti, Michigan, asking
good friend and Kalitta Funny Car
driver J.R. Todd to join him on the ride up. They
discussed racing, the environment within the
team and then met with Top Fuel teammates
Troy Coughlin Jr. and Doug Kalitta at the shop.
It was all relatively routine and fairly uneventful,
but even then Langdon noticed something unique
about the team he had just joined.
“It was just like hanging out with your buddies,”
Langdon said. “It was just a fun environment.”
The man known for his “#effective” tweeting
soon added his brand of humor to the mix. Later
that evening at dinner, Langdon tweeted a fairly
innocent “Happy birthday to @J_R_Todd” with
Todd giving a thumbs-up to the free ice cream
in front of him.
Except, of course, it wasn’t Todd’s birthday
(which is actually in December). Again, noth-
ing wild and nothing crazy, and just the type of
innocuous humor you would expect from two
good friends. But also, precisely the reason why
Langdon figures to fit in perfectly with a team that
works hard, but also has plenty of fun doing it.
“It’s a good fit and I wasn’t really nervous about
coming on board,” said Langdon, who won a Top
Fuel championship in 2013. “It’s laid back and
easygoing, but they’re passionate about the sport.
When they win the race, they do the mosh pit
and it’s all one big race team that five teams are
part of. Connie (Kalitta) is a legend of our sport
and I love listening to his stories. From the first
conversation, I could really tell I was going to
have a lot of fun.”
Langdon has had plenty of fun, mixing in his
own brand of humor along the way – see his
#effective tweeting for further examples – even
as his Global Electronic Technology team has
suffered through the bumps one might expect
starting the season four races behind. A chance
for the 10th spot in the Top Fuel Countdown to
the Championship is still well within reach for
the talented Langdon, but more than anything
he hopes to have found a place he can call home.
An unexpected and certainly not-planned no-
madic professional career has taken him from
Morgan Lucas Racing, where he got his Top Fuel
start, to now-defunct Al-Anabi Racing, where
he teamed with legendary tuner Alan Johnson
to win his first championship, to racing with
Alan Johnson Racing for a brief spell after Al-