Shawn Langdon
because this is what I do for a living. Rather than
sit at home and go do whatever else there is to do,
I use my off weekends to better myself as a driver.
“When you get in the zone and stay focused,
you really don’t get out of the zone, so I feel like
every time I sit in the Funny Car I don’t have
those two weeks off. I don’t feel rusty. You just try
to stay mentally focused and mentally prepared,
so there’s no way I mentally ever get out of race
mode. I’m in race mode about 300 days a year.”
don confesses. “There’s a lot that goes with it
with the TV and being in the spotlight, but I just
love to drag race. I love to go fast and go down a
drag strip and fortunately I was able to get in a
position where I could drive a Top Fuel dragster
and now a Funny Car for a living.”
It’s an interesting feng shui for the 15-time
event winner. Without racing professionally in
Funny Car, he wouldn’t be afforded the luxury
to go bracket racing when he wants. But without
Car ranks, while Langdon believes his ability
to be a star on the starting line and drive his
way through adverse situations traces back to
his sportsman-racing prowess. Without either,
a piece of him would be missing, but combined
they make Langdon one of the most talented
racers in the sport today.
“There may be sometimes where you’re at a
track and you’ve never sat in somebody’s car, and
you make the agreement to drive their car for that
“All I’ve known my whole life is racing.
I don’t know how to function at home on an
off weekend. I don’t know how to be at home.”
That’s the way Langdon has been programmed
every since starting in the sport, a nod to his
impressive success in the sportsman ranks. He
grew up racing Jr. Dragsters on the West Coast,
falling in love with everything about the sport.
Langdon has grown to tolerate the interviews, the
press conferences and being on television – all
things required of a professional driver – but he
admits it’s not something he was built for when
he entered the professional ranks.
Langdon became a star in the sport by winning
a Top Fuel championship for Al-Anabi Racing,
and has raced for Don Schumacher Racing and
now Kalitta Motorsports. He has willingly em-
braced the PR and the personality side of the
sport, but Langdon is also first to acknowledge
nothing about his passion has changed. It al-
ways comes back to racing and that remains his
first priority.
“Even though I’ve been doing it 10 years, at
times I still feel a little out of my element,” Lang-
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bracket racing, Langdon wouldn’t be the driver
he is inside the 10,000-horsepower Funny Car.
But together, they work flawlessly and it’s a
balance that has brought out the best in Lang-
don at every step in his career. He won Super
Comp national championships in the Lucas Oil
Drag Racing Series in 2007 and 2008, parlay-
ing that success into the Top Fuel and Funny
race, so you have to figure it out,” Langdon said.
“There’s a lot of benefits to sportsman racing. Hav-
ing multiple years being able to adapt to different
situations to different surroundings to how every
car drives different, I think that’s probably been
one of the biggest benefits that I’ve been able to
translate up to making the switch from driving
Top Fuel to Funny Car.”
Issue 145