The pace of this past race weekend at the Summernationals at Englishtown, N.J., was hectic for Greg Anderson and in the end, it was worth it.

After flying back to Mooresville, N.C., Saturday to attend his son’s high school graduation, Anderson made it back in time to Englishtown Sunday and left with a Wally.

Anderson clocked a 6.613-second elapsed time at 210.44 mph to defeat Vincent Nobile’s 6.665-second, 210.21 mph lap in the finals.

“It wasn’t an easy day,” said Anderson, who drives for Ken Black Racing. “For me, I’m sick with this stuff. My wife explained to me how important it would for me to be there (for his son’s graduation), and I agreed. I told my guys when I left that I will either be back in time for Q4 or you will probably never see me again if I don’t make it there in time. Everything worked out.”

And, Anderson was grateful he could attend his son’s graduation.

“I witnessed a really, really cool event, it was a neat deal, they did it on the football field at the high school and the kids had a blast,” Anderson said. “It was a neat atmosphere and a neat deal and definitely brought a tear to my eye. I was very glad I was there. The only thing I’m sad about is I missed the party after graduation, but this makes up for it. Now, we will have to go home and have another party. I’ve never actually handed my son one of these Wallys, but this one is absolutely going to him. I’m proud of him.”

This was 88th NHRA Pro Stock national event win in his career and his eighth at Englishtown.

“Englishtown has been magical for me,” Anderson said. “I have a lot of great memories here even before I got behind the wheel and coming here with Warren and Kurt (Johnson), and Kurt running the first 6-second run when I was on their team. It has been a great place for me.”

Anderson beat Kenny Delco, Allen Johnson, Bo Butner and then ousted Nobile.

“This is the first real hot race track we’ve had all year and it’s a great race track when it is cool out, you set world record times,” Anderson said. “When it is hot out here at Englishtown you struggle because it is just hard to get a hold of that starting line. You have good barometric pressure up here and the cars make great power and then you lose the starting line with the heat.  It is the worst of both worlds for Pro Stock cars. It is very hard to get them hooked up in low gear. You saw the challenges everybody had today, and we were able to do a better job than the rest. That’s probably why we have won eight times here because I have a great team behind me.”