Shawn Langdon

He is the crew chief for Shawn Langdon and the Coletta Air team in the NHRA Top Fuel class.

Brian is a great guy to talk to because he's going to try to give us some answers as to how this team has been absolutely untouchable this season.

brian and sean have eight victories including four straight going into sunday's race in texas they have eight number one qualifiers leading the point standings by over a hundred on their teammate and just continuing to put down absolutely incredible mile an hour runs including 345 and 346 just this season Brian alone has an incredible resume.

I'm just going to read it from Coletta Motorsports, where it says he's been involved in 10 NHRA Top Fuel Championships and more than 100 event wins during his career, which goes more than 35 seasons.

Some of the guys he's worked with include Alan Johnson, Tony Schumacher, Larry Dixon, Dale Worsham.

You will hear some of that in this conversation, so let's jump to it.

Here's Brian Houston on the Racing Writers Podcast.

looking at your resume i mean i could list it off i could go through all the numbers from this year but brian as you know that would take forever because just this year alone you sean the coletta air group have been just on an absolute roll so to start broadly from your perspective can you just sum up how you all have gotten to this point and maybe just your your takeaways as one of the guys uh leading the way to all the success so far as i guess i would say so far so good right

Dallas Glenn, Pro Stock racer.

Shawn Langdon, Pro S- or, uh, sorry.

Top Fuel.

Dallas Glenn, bracket racer.

Shawn Langdon, bracket racer.

Yep.

Um-

But the third and final leg of three straight weeks to open the Countdown, some things just never change, apparently, in the NHRA.

Like in top fuel, where Shawn Langdon continues to absolutely dominate this countdown in likes we haven't seen since Steve Torrence swept all six races back in 2018.

Langdon beat first time finalist Will Smith, who suffered tire smoke early in the run with a 373.2 at 335.90 miles per hour to score his fourth event win in a row, including the first three races of the Countdown, his eighth win this year, and his 30th career win.

But the points situation is a lot rougher for everybody else at this point, as Langdon's teammate and reigning world champion Doug Kalitta got bounced in round one by Shawn Reed, who's a good friend of ours on the Throttle Four podcast.

The NHRA Midwest Nationals [laughs] were at Worldwide Tech.

Um, Gateway, uh, and Top Fuel points leader Shawn Langdon powered, uh, to his fourth consecutive victory of the season by defeating first-time finalist Will Smith, not that Will Smith, um, with a 3.732-second pass at 335.90 miles an hour.

[smacks lips] Uh, Austin Prock reignited his championship hopes in Funny Car with a crucial final round victory, taking the win.

Uh, he did it with a 3.906-second run at 329.9 miles an hour.

I go up to the line believing full-heartedly that we have the opportunity and the shot to win, whatever race and whoever we're going up against.

But to line up first round against Shawn Langdon, he was a huge-

Yeah.

[laughs]

Um, you know, he mentored me in a lot of ways.

Ron Capps was obviously huge, and I asked him a, a million questions.

But for every question that Ron Capps basically said, "I can't answer for you," I went to Shawn Langdon.

Mm.

It was just straight-up incredible.

Top Fuel saw Shawn Langdon rewrite the history books yet again as his semifinal against teammate Doug Coletta saw Langdon go a mind-boggling 346.95 mph.

I mean, I can't even believe I'm saying that.

It smashes the old speed record of 345.00 miles an hour that Langdon also set back at South Georgia back in May.