Anderson Jumps Up to Top Spot in Pro Stock at Reading
Reading, Pa. -- Greg Anderson made it two in a row for Pro Stock No. 1 qualifiers after driving the Summit Racing Pontiac GXP to the top spot for tomorrow's eliminations at the 24th annual Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway. The current points leader matched his qualifying effort last weekend at Brainerd with an elapsed time of 6.611 seconds at 208.84 mph to claim his fifth No. 1 qualifier of the season. Kurt Johnson held on to the No. 2 qualifying position in his ACDelco Chevy Cobalt, and Jason Line, who had yesterday's provisional Pro Stock pole, dropped down to the No. 3 qualifying position.
"Ideally, the goal is to qualify Jason (Line, teammate) and me first and second," Anderson said, "but that's a lot easier said than done. It's been very, very difficult to do this year because of the competition level. The competition level in this Pro Stock class right now is absolutely the best it's ever been. I know I sound like I say that all the time, but it's never been more true. There are six to eight guys on any given weekend that can qualify No. 1 or win the race.
"If you can pull that off and qualify No. 1 and No. 2, or No. 1 and No. 3 like we are here, then you've had a good run in qualifying. That gets the whole team pumped up. What you don't want is to go through qualifying and end up in the bottom half and then go into Sunday having to make wholesale changes to your car. The good news for us is we don't have to make those changes tomorrow. We'll just have to try and keep up with the sunshine and the amount of sun and heat we get on the racetrack. We've set ourselves up well for the first time in as long as I can remember. This is probably the best I've felt going into race day about both team cars. We've got a good 1-2 punch. We've got both Summit Pontiacs on opposite sides of the ladder which is our other goal. If we do our job, things go right and we have a perfect race, the chance is there that we can meet in the finals. That's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."
Anderson has used a class-leading five victories to build a 56-point lead over second-place Johnson with two races remaining before the Countdown to 1 six-race playoff, but the three-time POWERade champ knows he still has a lot of work to do if he wants to claim his fourth title. He tied Dave Connolly for a class-leading eight wins last year but finished second to Jeg Coughlin Jr. once the Countdown began.
"You want to peak when the start of the Countdown comes," Anderson. "I learned last year that it's impossible to go through the regular season and then as soon as the Countdown starts, just turn it on. You can't do that. You better be operating at full tilt when you get to it. Now's the time to peak. For the last month we've been on an uphill grade, getting better, getting better, and getting better. I feel real good about that, but one problem I have is there are other cars doing the same doggone thing. There are other cars that are really, really hitting their stride right now, so it's just going to be a fantastic Countdown. It's going to be an absolute knock-down, drag-out brawl for six races, but I'm looking forward to it."
With his ACDelco Chevy Cobalt running with the consistency of a bracket car, Kurt Johnson, coming off his win last weekend at Brainerd, qualified No. 2 for the third consecutive race and looks to be a formidable opponent in eliminations. He drove his Chevy to an elapsed time of 6.614 seconds at 208.91 mph and will face Pontiac driver Greg Stanfield in the first round.
"Day 2 is in the books in Reading, and I feel we have a car that we can win with," Johnson said. "Just as we did in Brainerd, we changed things after every run, and our ACDelco Chevy Cobalt responded, picking up four hundredths from our worst run to our best. We made the right calls today and ran well with a 6.61 and a 6.63, keeping pace with the very best out there.
"Our Chevy is very good, making its best run of qualifying in the final session to put us in good position for Sunday. We don't have to keep trying to make a perfect run because we came close to doing that this afternoon. All we need to do now is duplicate it four times tomorrow."
Anderson's teammate Jason Line was the provisional No. 1 qualifier yesterday after two of four rounds of qualifying and Anderson was qualified No. 3. Today they swapped positions but Line had the quickest run in today's fourth and final qualifying session and is looking forward to tomorrow's eliminations.
"That's a really good start to the weekend," Line said, "and we're on opposite sides of the ladder which we haven't been able to do for awhile, so we're very happy with that. And making the best run in the heat of the day, which I think is more representative of what we'll see tomorrow, makes me very excited going into race day. I feel like this is probably one of the better cars I've had, so hopefully we can turn that into something good tomorrow. I'm proud of the guys in the engine shop; they've done a good job as well as the car guys. I think we're peaking at the right time, and I think there's more good stuff to come.
Ron Krisher in the Valvoline Chevy Cobalt jumped up to No. 7 on the qualifying grid and is the second-highest qualified Chevy in the field. Krisher was the fourth-fastest car in the final round of qualifying with an impressive 6.646-second run in the heat of the day at 207.50 mph.
"I knew we could do it," Krisher said. "You could see it in the runs we were making. We finally made the changes we needed to make on that last run and away it went. I knew it would run fast, I just didn't know how fast, and that was pretty fast."
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