Greg Anderson never - not once during the day Sunday - assumed anything.
Oh, well, maybe one thing. He might have assumed he was going to lose long before the final round. The winners circle? That was beyond daydreaming.

"I've been dragging my lip," the Pro Stock dominator-turned-struggler said. "I wouldn't have been surprised if I had exited early today. But we found a way each round to win."

Greg Anderson never - not once during the day Sunday - assumed anything.
Oh, well, maybe one thing. He might have assumed he was going to lose long before the final round. The winners circle?
That was beyond daydreaming.

"I've been dragging my lip," the Pro Stock dominator-turned-struggler said. "I wouldn't have been surprised if I had exited early today. But we found a way each round to win."

Yes, Anderson won Sunday's O'Reilly Super Star Batteries Fall Nationals – he won. He got a reminder of what that feels like in August at Brainerd, Minn. That was his first victory of the season. The Summit Racing Equipment Pontiac GXP driver was runner-up to teammate Jason Line at Sonoma one race earlier. .

But none of that signaled a turnaround. Instead, Anderson dropped out in the quarterfinals at Reading and posted back-to-back losses at Indianapolis and Charlotte.

So he had no real idea Sunday that he would charge through the field - "slide" through the field, as he might have described it.

"I can't remember stealing one like we did today," Anderson said.

He almost had conceded the event to sizzling-hot Mike Edwards and the Young Life/A.R.T. Pontiac GXP.

"Mike Edwards has been making us all look bad lately," Anderson said. "He's got the baddest car that's ever been in Pro Stock. And lo and behold, something crazy happened (to Edwards)."

Edwards either experienced or caused a staging problem that disrupted his concentration and caused him to lose to Anderson in the semifinal.

The points leader had been nearly untouchable on the track, and he had an almost-unheard-of opportunity against Anderson to gain a huge advantage over his closest Countdown rivals. Jeg Coughlin succumbed to mechanical troubles early in his semifinal run against Johnny Gray. Jason Line, Greg Stanfield, Allen Johnson, and Kurt Johnson were finished for the day. But instead of a clean shot at semifinal opponent Anderson, all Edwards got was a head start to Memphis Motorsports Park for this weekend's O'Reilly Mid-South Nationals.

All Edwards said he knew was that "the light kept blinking" after he sat there at the line when Anderson took off with a not-particularly-spectacular .133 reaction time. Edwards decided to go, and he was charged with a .362 light and a 13.595 elapsed time to Anderson's 6.689-second pass at 207.37 mph.

Said Anderson, "I'm still trying to figure out what happened." He said the blinking light "somehow messed him up. It was bizarre. We're getting some luck today. We don't have the strongest car on the grounds."

After his victory, Anderson attributed the foul-up at the tree to nerves or lack of concentration -- something he said has plagued him in the past.

When, in Anderson's words, "you have a horse that strong," he said, "you can't be careless. You can't throw the race away. This racin' deal ... it's a mind thing."

Nevertheless, Edwards retained his Pro Stock points lead. He has 65 points more than No. 2 Jeg Coughlin and 80 more than No. 3 Anderson.

His final-round 6.684-second run at 207.11 mph topped Johnny Gray's 6.713/206.64 in his Dodge Stratus. It came in the version of the Summit Pontiac GXP with which brother-in-law Ronnie Humphrey had borrowed and found some success in recent NHRA races.

It also earned him a first-round victory over Warren Johnson and a second-round victory over Allen Johnson.

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