Shawn Langdon doubled his 2026 Top Fuel win count and Jordan Vandergriff broke through for a long-awaited maiden Funny Car victory at the NHRA Southern Nationals in Atlanta, headlining a four-class sweep that also crowned Dallas Glenn and Matt Smith.
Langdon's day produced an all-Kalitta Motorsports final, the Kalitta Air dragster downing the Mac Tools machine of veteran Doug Kalitta with a 3.808-second pass at 333.16 mph. After Shawn Langdon's mid-week speed record headlines earlier in the season, his Atlanta win came with the engineers' dial slightly turned down — and the Kalitta veteran was clear-eyed about why.
"This is very satisfying. I mean, it's always a good weekend when you can wake up in the morning and feel like you can win," Langdon said.
He admitted the Atlanta surface and conditions did not allow the kind of headline numbers he ran during his record-setting Vegas weekend.
"You get a little taste of 345 [mph] and then today, it was different. You had to check your ego a bit," Langdon said.
In Funny Car, the breakthrough belonged to Jordan Vandergriff. The Cornwell Quality Tools Chevy ran 4.007 at 314.17 mph to defeat veteran J.R. Todd in the final round, sealing a maiden NHRA national event victory after years of near-misses.
"I'm still kind of taking in just how special this is. This moment is something I thought of for a very long time," Vandergriff said.
His ambition for the rest of the season was uncomplicated.
"Hopefully, this is just the first of many, and it's a good one to start," he said.
Pro Stock served up the Sunday's strangest scorebook. Dallas Glenn took his second win of 2026, running 6.642 at 211.39 mph in the RAD Torque Systems Chevrolet to beat Troy Coughlin Jr. in the final, but he openly admitted he was not sure how he had got there.
"Today was definitely pretty weird. This is probably the weirdest elimination day of Pro Stock car that I can remember," Glenn said.
He gave credit where credit was due — to fortune, as much as to the engineering room.
"I was shocked to win the way that I did, but as long as the planets aligned a little bit, with a little luck, that definitely played a role today," Glenn said.
Pro Stock Motorcycle saw Matt Smith land his first win of 2026, the multi-time champion piloting the Denso Auto Parts Buell to a 6.724 at 202.06 mph win over Richard Gadson. The veteran was quick to deflect the praise toward his programme.
"This is not only rewarding for me, but it's just rewarding for our team, because we worked so hard this winter," Smith said.
"I'm glad we showed up today."
The Atlanta result tightens up multiple championship hunts heading into the next stop on the schedule. Kalitta Motorsports leaves Georgia with another all-team final under its belt, Vandergriff's win recalibrates the Funny Car points race, and the late-spring NHRA grind moves on with four very different stories of how to win on a treacherous race day.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/nhra-southern-nationals-2026-langdon-vandergriff). Visit for full coverage.*