Kalitta remains fighter

Conrad Kalitta always has had a tough-guy reputation in drag racing, but you probably need one if you grow up being called Connie.

As owner of Kalitta Air, one of the country's largest cargo carriers, he once thwarted the hijacking of a Learjet, convincing the knife-wielding perpetrator to take him along instead of a secretary who would become his son's wife.

Kalitta's pitch was aided because he could fly the jet.

The decision was one of the kidnapper's worst, as Kalitta absorbed a few deep cuts to his hands while disarming him. The arrival of state police probably saved the guy from a good butt-kicking.

Kalitta, a 71-year-old Michigan native, never shied away from a fight when he was growing up in drag racing, running hot rods on deserted airstrips where safety accoutrements were as common as croissants.

Times have changed.

His fighting spirit has shifted since June 21, 2008, when his son, Scott, died in a fiery drag-racing crash at an NHRA national event in Englishtown, N.J.

The engine in Scott Kalitta's Funny Car exploded at the quarter-mile mark, and the vehicle continued at high speeds to the end of the track, where it became airborne and was destroyed.

Scott Kalitta died at the scene. He was 46.

"Anything that could have gone wrong with the car went wrong," the elder Kalitta said Friday during a break in the Las Vegas NHRA Nationals at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"And there were the problems with the end of the track."

The older New Jersey dragstrip, like many on the circuit, has a shorter slow-down area than newer facilities such as the one here. Kalitta had been trying to get NHRA to slow down cars before that, and it finally relented by shortening races by 320 feet to 1,000 feet shortly after the crash.

Additional safety catch-nets and other structural modifications also have been made at his urging.

Safety enhancements to the end of the track in New Jersey are credited with saving the life of one racer already, Kalitta said.

It's a fight he won't give up, but giving up the sport never crossed his mind.

"Scott and I grew up in drag racing. If it had been the other way around, and I'd have been in that car, he'd have come back racing because he's a drag racer, just like I am," he said.

Connie Kalitta gained fame in his "Bounty Hunter" dragsters beginning in the 1960s. He won 10 NHRA titles as a driver. As an owner and crew chief, he won NHRA championships with his son twice, and with driver Shirley Muldowney in 1977 when she became the only woman to win a crown in one of NHRA's top two categories.

This is Kalitta's 50th year in drag racing, and he is fielding his son's Funny Car with driver Jeff Arend and Top Fuel dragsters for nephew Doug Kalitta and Australia native David Grubnic.

"I enjoy coming to the races because my peers are here. Some of them I've raced with for 50 years," Kalitta said. "It's a real good getaway from my other business."

Kalitta Air includes 21 747 jumbo jets and 1,500 employees. It flies military mail from New Jersey to the Middle East each day, along with other special missions.

He still won't back down from a fight, whether it's a hijacker or sending one of his jets into a war zone.

And he won't turn his back on drag racing, even if fate turned its back on him.

"When you love something as much as I do drag racing, you go on. But you try to make it better," he said.

Contact reporter Jeff Wolf at jwolf@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0247.