Kalitta Wins
Budweiser Shootout

by Susan Wade
photos by Ron Lewis
11/12/03

hen the Budweiser Shootout for Top Fuel turns 20 next year, the birthday party won't be at Pomona Raceway and the games will be a grab bag of surprises.

Doug Kalitta and Tony Schumacher ushered out the last familiar-format specialty race for the Top Fuel class at least for the near future in style. Kalitta earned $100,000 for defeating Schumacher in the final round in the quickest side-by-side race in drag-racing history.

Kalitta and his Mac Tools Dragster had qualified No. 1 at the first five races and nine times overall in the 2003 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series season. So the best-qualifying car with the best elapsed-time average fittingly outran "The Sarge," the U.S. Army Dragster, one of the most powerful vehicles on the planet.

Kalitta scored his second Budweiser Shootout victory with a 4.479-second blast at 330.88 miles an hour to Schumacher's 4.471/329.58. The margin of victory was eight-thousandths of a second, or about four feet. (Because the feat occurred in a specialty race

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and not final eliminations, the distinction still belongs to Kenny Bernstein and Larry Dixon for their 2001 match-up in Reading, Pa. Dixon won that in 4.511 seconds, as Bernstein ran a 4.510.)

The event was incorporated into the last day of qualifying for the Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals at Pomona Raceway, the last of 23 races in the 2003 season.

Drag-racing fans had seen Kalitta and Schumacher stage side-by-side battles since Kalitta edged Schumacher to win in August at Brainerd, Minn. Schumacher eliminated Kalitta in five of the next six races, and Kalitta knocked Schumacher out of contention in the other.