After winning the K&N Horsepower Challenge on Saturday, Summit Racing Pro Stock driver Greg Anderson came into Sunday’s final eliminations of the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals looking to repeat his performance from a year ago, where he won his sponsor’s race and claimed the $25,000 “double up” bonus. However, the four-time champion knew his assignment would be anything but easy, as he would be starting from the ninth position and relinquishing lane choice to the category’s most recent winner, Allen Johnson, in the first round.
Running in the first pair, Anderson flashed the same form he had used in winning the specialty event the day before, posting the third-quickest time of the round at 6.604-seconds with a top speed of 208.52 mph. Unfortunately, it was not enough to overcome his opponent’s starting line advantage, who used a 6.629-second run to gain the narrow victory. Although naturally disappointed by the early end to his day, he still found reasons to smile.
“Today was just a crazy day for the Summit Racing team,” said Anderson. “Obviously I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and was done early, but we still had two cars left with Ronnie (brother-in-law Humphrey in the Summit/Genuine Hotrod Pontiac) and Jason (teammate Line in his Summit Racing GXP). Although Ronnie went out in the next round, we thought we had a good chance with our third car, but he fell in the semis. I can’t explain why, but we just didn’t perform as well as we should have.
“But there are still a lot of bright spots for this team moving forward. My Summit Racing Pontiac performed as well as it has all season, and even though I let it down today, we still had a fantastic day yesterday, winning the K&N $50,000 bonus, and we’re not going to let today spoil that, because it was still a great weekend.
“We’re also happy with the gains we made with my race car. I think we’re headed in the right direction, and are going to have many chances to win in the future. We’re not going to panic, we’re going to go home and study what we did wrong, and try to get it right two weeks from now in Chicago.”
Running in the first pair, Anderson flashed the same form he had used in winning the specialty event the day before, posting the third-quickest time of the round at 6.604-seconds with a top speed of 208.52 mph. Unfortunately, it was not enough to overcome his opponent’s starting line advantage, who used a 6.629-second run to gain the narrow victory. Although naturally disappointed by the early end to his day, he still found reasons to smile.
“Today was just a crazy day for the Summit Racing team,” said Anderson. “Obviously I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and was done early, but we still had two cars left with Ronnie (brother-in-law Humphrey in the Summit/Genuine Hotrod Pontiac) and Jason (teammate Line in his Summit Racing GXP). Although Ronnie went out in the next round, we thought we had a good chance with our third car, but he fell in the semis. I can’t explain why, but we just didn’t perform as well as we should have.
“But there are still a lot of bright spots for this team moving forward. My Summit Racing Pontiac performed as well as it has all season, and even though I let it down today, we still had a fantastic day yesterday, winning the K&N $50,000 bonus, and we’re not going to let today spoil that, because it was still a great weekend.
“We’re also happy with the gains we made with my race car. I think we’re headed in the right direction, and are going to have many chances to win in the future. We’re not going to panic, we’re going to go home and study what we did wrong, and try to get it right two weeks from now in Chicago.”
