A key element in any drag race is lane choice, the ability of one competitor to choose which side of the track he will use in competition. Although it can be of negligible value, in some instances it can be the difference between winning and losing. Such was the case during Sunday’s final eliminations of the O’Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals, where 86% of the round wins in the Pro Stock category came from the right lane at Houston Raceway Park.
After qualifying fifth, Summit Racing driver Greg Anderson experienced both ends of the spectrum on Sunday. In the opening stanza, he used the preferred lane to cover the quarter-mile in 6.617-seconds with a top speed of 209.14 mph to defeat good friend and rival Kurt Johnson in the opening stanza. However, he was relegated to the left hand side in the quarterfinals, where his admittedly sub par 6.657-second, 207.91 mph run put a premature end to his day. Even so, the three-time champion was hesitant to blame his fate solely on the race track.
“It would be easy to blame our difficulties on the disparity between the lanes, because there certainly is a difference, but we certainly had our share of issues on that run,” said Anderson. “Neither the driver nor the car performed as well as we should, and it cost us. We made a change this week trying a different chassis, which I believe will be more forgiving in the long run. Unfortunately, we have yet to find its sweet spot and make it fast. It’s been a learning experience so far, and whether we continue to race this particular car or not, it’s definitely opened our eyes to a lot of things.
“We’re certainly not pleased with our performance at this point, so we are going to keep digging until we get it right. We need to create a bigger tuning window like some of the other cars have, and we need to run fast, In any case, we know we still have a lot more work to do to make these three Summit Pontiacs happy. We’ll keep plugging away, and sooner or later we are going to get it figured out, and the sooner we do it, the better.”
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