By Jerry Jordan, Editor
LAS VEGAS – NHRA in Las Vegas was loud, wet and windy but that didn’t stop most of the action from playing out on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway as Doug Kalitta took home top honors in Top Fuel Dragster and ensured Shawn Langdon didn’t lock up the championship before Pomona.
As mentioned, Kalitta won Top Fuel and then Jordan Vandergriff won the Wally Top Fuel Funny Cars while Dallas Glenn continued his winning ways in NHRA Pro Stock at the MOPAR NHRA Las Vegas Nationals powered by Dodge. The only major casualty of the weekend, besides sunshine and the sportsman division finals, was the championship race for the Pro Stock Motorcycle division due to high winds making it too dangerous to race. It was literally pushed down the road to the Pomona Dragstrip and will be run on Saturday between Gaige Herrera and Richard Gadsden.
Kalitta, the reigning champion, ran 3.60s on all four passes Sunday and saved his best for the final, a 3.658 at 338.60 mph, the quickest run of the weekend. Leah Pruett slowed to 5.751 at 124.89 in the other lane. The win was Kalitta’s fifth of the season and the 64th of his career.
The win light that mattered most came one round earlier. Shawn Langdon left first in the semifinal but smoked the tires and Kalitta drove away with the win he had to have. He still trails Langdon by 107 points going to Pomona.
“It was definitely a sigh of relief to see that win light come on against Shawn, to finally get by those guys,” Kalitta said. “That was what I was hoping for, to get a shot at Shawn in the third round and hopefully beat him, and so it worked out well.”
“I have to admit, it feels like a long shot, but anything can happen with points and a half at Pomona,” Kalitta said. “Pomona is really one of my favorite places to race.”
Langdon, the No. 1 qualifier, beat Cameron Ferre and Billy Torrence before the semifinal and leaves Las Vegas still leading the points.
“We just got caught up in the semis and smoked the tires for some reason,” Langdon said. “The Kalitta Air Careers car was good all weekend – we qualified No. 1 and made two good runs today, but then we were just trying to make a good run in the semis and smoked tires. We’re big Doug Kalitta fans over here; Doug Kalitta, Mac Tools, Alan Johnson – that whole team is the cream of the crop; they have the No. 1 on their car for a reason.
“We’re still in a really good spot. We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and go to Pomona to see what we can do.”
Funny Car delivered the day’s script. Vandergriff, a Funny Car rookie in John Force Racing’s Cornwell Tools Chevrolet SS, had to win and needed points leader Matt Hagan to lose early. J.R. Todd handled the second part in the second round. Vandergriff handled the rest, beating Julie Nataas, Spencer Hyde and Todd to reach the final, where he ran 3.873 at 331.36 to beat Ron Capps, who ran 3.921 at 335.15 in his fifth final of 2026. The win was Vandergriff’s fourth of the year and it pulled him within 39 points of Hagan.
“This is the biggest one,” Vandergriff said. “Today literally worked out, you know, I envisioned it this morning. It was like, you know, how do we need today to go? We need the second round to go a certain way. We need somebody else to lose. We need this, we need that, and it literally played itself out the way I imagined.
“But yeah, this fourth win I think is obviously huge, just because we’re 39 points back now of Hagan and coming in today with a really, really long shot. Now we can go to Pomona with a chance. So that’s all I wanted.”
Vandergriff grew up in Brea, right next to the Pomona track, so the finale is a home race for him too.
Pro Stock had no such suspense. Glenn, the reigning champion, made it two straight perfect weekends, winning from the No. 1 spot in Dallas and again in Las Vegas. He beat Erica Enders and Matt Hartford along the way, then ran the quickest Pro Stock pass of the weekend in the final, 6.587 at 206.26, to beat Troy Coughlin Jr. at 6.604 and 207.69. The win was Glenn’s sixth of the season and the 27th of his career.
The door swung open when Greg Stanfield, who led Glenn by 71 points two races ago, lost in the first round for the second straight race.
“When he lost first round of Dallas, it definitely caught our attention,” Glenn said. “And then here, seeing him lose first round, we were kind of shocked. It was like, holy cow, I mean, we can really, really put a hurting on him here.
“I didn’t know it was 87, so that kind of makes me happy that it’s kind of close to that 90 mark.”
The season closes Nov. 12–15 with the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals at Pomona Dragstrip, with Langdon up 107 on Kalitta in Top Fuel, Hagan up 39 on Vandergriff in Funny Car, Glenn up 87 on Hartford in Pro Stock and one motorcycle final to run.
The wind also cut the sportsman program short, with the remaining finals moved to Monday in Las Vegas.