After being forced to shut off on his opening attempt, Greg Anderson rolled to the line for the second qualifying session at the Summit Racing Equipment Southern NHRA Nationals in Atlanta, GA uncharacteristically outside the field. With rain in the forecast for Saturday, making a solid run became almost imperative, with the team having to balance being conservative to ensure they would complete the run with using an aggressive set-up to deliver the necessary performance.
Fortunately, the four-time champion and his crew made all the right decisions, as the Summit Racing Pontiac streaked through the quarter-mile in 6.632-seconds with a top speed of 207.37 mph to claim the fifth starting position midway through qualifying. Although relieved to have placed himself well inside the field at his sponsor’s race, Anderson was far from satisfied, hoping the weatherman would be wrong so he could have the opportunity to further improve his standing tomorrow.
“It wasn’t pretty, but everything worked out okay in the end,” said Anderson. “For some reason, my car just wasn’t happy today, spinning and bouncing the tires like we didn’t have any traction. We were able to get in the top half of the field on that second pass, so we don’t have to panic, but we still have some work to do figuring out why it’s so ill, and what we need to do to make it better.
“The good news is that we know this Summit Racing Pontiac is fast, and now that we got it in the show, we can focus on improving it for race day. The day may have started off bad, but this KB Racing crew never stopped working, and we ended up salvaging a pretty good spot, and hopefully tomorrow we can move up even further.”
Fortunately, the four-time champion and his crew made all the right decisions, as the Summit Racing Pontiac streaked through the quarter-mile in 6.632-seconds with a top speed of 207.37 mph to claim the fifth starting position midway through qualifying. Although relieved to have placed himself well inside the field at his sponsor’s race, Anderson was far from satisfied, hoping the weatherman would be wrong so he could have the opportunity to further improve his standing tomorrow.
“It wasn’t pretty, but everything worked out okay in the end,” said Anderson. “For some reason, my car just wasn’t happy today, spinning and bouncing the tires like we didn’t have any traction. We were able to get in the top half of the field on that second pass, so we don’t have to panic, but we still have some work to do figuring out why it’s so ill, and what we need to do to make it better.
“The good news is that we know this Summit Racing Pontiac is fast, and now that we got it in the show, we can focus on improving it for race day. The day may have started off bad, but this KB Racing crew never stopped working, and we ended up salvaging a pretty good spot, and hopefully tomorrow we can move up even further.”
