Defending NHRA Pro Stock champion Greg Anderson and his Summit Racing team completed a very consistent and impressive qualifying effort on Saturday, capturing the third starting position for Sunday’s final eliminations of the Tire Kingdom NHRA Nationals in Gainesville, Florida. In three of the four sessions at Gainesville Raceway, Anderson was one of the top two runners among the 21 Pro Stock Cars attempting to qualify, with his opening 6.495-second time on Friday afternoon remaining his run of record.
Anderson continued to impress on Saturday, recording a 6.499-second elapsed time in the early session despite the slightly elevated temperatures to join Mike Edwards as the only drivers in Pro Stock history to make two 6.49-second runs. Cautiously optimistic about his chances for a third Gatornationals win, there was only one item missing from Anderson’s qualifying to-do list.
“Any time you can run a 6.49 and not be 100% thrilled is a pretty good day,” said Anderson. “To be able to run record times every time down the race track is pretty neat, and when we saw the forecast for this weekend we couldn’t wait to get here. Although we definitely felt we left a little on the table, our Summit Racing Pontiac was still very fast, which is very encouraging. We’re naturally a little disappointed that we let the record slip away because I really think we could have gotten it. Besides, there is always tomorrow, and even if we can’t get the record, we can always win the race.
“The good news is that we know we have a fast hot rod that is going down the racetrack every time. It has yet to make a perfect run, so maybe we can do that four times tomorrow. This weekend has been a lot of fun already, but we’re looking forward to Sunday. I love the Gatornationals and running on this race track, and we have two fast Summit Racing Pontiacs that both have a great shot of going the distance tomorrow, so we’ll see what we can do. There are a lot of fast cars here this weekend, but we are two of them, giving us two great chances of winning the race. That’s the plan.”
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