Wed, 24 Oct 2007, 01:56 PM Mac Tools and NHRA's Doug Kalitta to take a Long Way Down Trip to Las Vegas

Courtesy of Todd Myers

LAS VEGAS -- Mac Tools and Kalitta Motorsports have teamed up once again to bring a special, one-race-only paint scheme to the throngs of NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series fans across the world. At the upcoming NHRA national event in Las Vegas, the ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals, at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Doug Kalitta and the Mac Tools team will forgo their normally bright-red clad 8,000-horsepower dragster identity for a unique journey through Europe and Africa via the quarter-mile in Las Vegas.

After riding motorcycles from London to New York in the Long Way Round in 2004, film actor Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman decided to take another iconic adventure, this time traveling the Long Way Down through Europe and Africa. The 15,000 mile adventure began in May of this year in John O'Groats, Scotland and recently finished at the most southern point of South Africa - Cape Agulhas.

Mac Tools partnered with McGregor and Boorman for their historic and treacherous journey by providing the adventurers with a supply of its world-renowned hand tools to aide them with everything from simple maintenance to large repairs. Boorman will be on-hand to see the Mac Tools/Long Way Down dragster take to "The Strip" in Las Vegas.

"What a thrill this is going to be," Kalitta, a 43-year old resident of Ann Arbor, said. "For everyone at Mac Tools and our Kalitta Motorsports team, this is very exciting. I am a big motorcycle fan and a big fan of Mr. McGregor's films. Their trip sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe we can give them and Mac Tools another thrill by guiding our Mac Tools/Long Way Down dragster to the winner's circle in Las Vegas."

Mac Tools and Kalitta Motorsports will also welcome some very special guests to the event in Las Vegas along with Boorman. Two-time Indy 500 winner Al Unser, Jr., TV personality and world-famous custom hot rod designer and builder Chip Foose, X-Games star and TV personality Carey Hart, custom motorcycle builder Jesse Rooke, and Steve Harwell, lead vocalist of the rock band Smash Mouth, will all be in attendance during the course of the weekend.

Kalitta scored his first breakthrough event win of the 2007 POWERade Drag Racing Series at the previous event in Richmond, Va. The win continues his impressive streak of winning at least one event in each year of his 10-year Top Fuel career.

Since winning the NHRA's equivalent of Rookie of the Year, the Automobile Club of Southern California's Road to the Future Award after the 1998 drag racing season, Kalitta has driven his dragster to 30 Top Fuel national event titles, which places him in sixth place in career wins for the sport's quickest and fastest class. In the past four NHRA seasons, Kalitta has solidified his place among the best Top Fuel pilots of all-time. Last season was arguably the best of his straight-line career. He won a career-high five national events in 2006 and led the POWERade points for almost the entire second half of the season. After finishing just 14 points shy of his first NHRA championship, Kalitta garnered his third career runner-up points finish in 2006. He was also points runner-up in 2003 and 2004.