“Whew, man, am I glad to get back in the winner’s circle. It’s been way too long,” Kalitta, a 49-year-old resident of Ann Arbor, Mich. said. “I can’t say enough about my Mac Tools team. Those guys are the best in the business and deserve all the credit. We’ve had such a great hot rod all year long so I’m glad to see we finally sealed the deal for all my guys. We had everything go right for us today. It was a really good day for the whole team. We’ll be celebrating this win for a while.

“It was also great to get a win for Jim and (daughter) Ashley Oberhofer. We lost Jim’s wife Tammy not too long ago to cancer. The Oberhofers have been part of our Kalitta Motorsports family for almost 30 years and losing Tammy was a huge blow to all of us. Tammy was also our office manager for many years and a truly wonderful lady. She is dearly missed by everyone, but I’m very glad we were able to get this trophy for Tammy.”

Langdon has advanced to at least the semifinals at 13 of the last 16 races and has five wins in nine final appearances this season, but came up short at Dallas. He defeated T.J. Zizzo, Bob Vandergriff and Morgan Lucas to reach the final.