ANDERSON GIFTS HIMSELF EARLY BIRTHDAY PRESENT WITH NO. 1 SPOT IN GAINESVILLE

Written by Larry Crum, photo by Roger Richards    Sat, 2021-03-13 17:07


Greg Anderson’s birthday may not be until Sunday, but he wasn’t waiting that long to give himself an early present.

On the eve of his 60th birthday, Anderson bested Erica Enders and Matt Hartford in a showdown of three quick Chevrolet Camaros to earn the first No. 1 qualifier of the season Saturday at the 52nd annual AMALIE Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway.

Anderson improved one spot from his lone qualifying session on Friday, leapfrogging defending class champion Enders to earn his second pole position in a row dating back to the 2020 season finale in Las Vegas. His 6.525-second lap at 211.36 mph in the Summit Racing Equipment Chevrolet Camaro in Q2 was good enough to lock in his 107th top qualifier award.

“There is no question about it, it has been a long five months of work,” Anderson said. “To not race for so long and then come out in the first race of the year and get P1, that is a feather in the cap for all of the guys. Obviously, they have been working hard and we’ve got a lot of fast Chevys in our pit area so we have a lot of chances to win tomorrow.

“I am pretty happy with the way all of the cars performed so far and it is going to be a battle royale tomorrow. We’ve definitely increased our odds through qualifying and set them up as good as we could. It is going to be a big birthday day tomorrow. I am going to try and give myself a big birthday present.”

Enders slipped to second on the strength of her Friday evening qualifying run, placing her Melling Performance Chevrolet Camaro second with a 6.528 at 210.77 mph. Matt Hartford, utilizing a KB Racing engine along with Anderson, qualified third and was the only driver to improve on his position in Q3, jumping up from seventh. He raced to a 6.532 at 209.62 mph.

Deric Kramer (6.540) and Kyle Koretsky (6.543) rounded out the top five, while defending Gaternationals winner Alex Laughlin qualified ninth.

All three of Anderson’s runs were among the top four of the session, however, Enders bettered her counterpart and was either first or second in all three of her runs.

Anderson was quick to point to an extra qualifying session - up from two sessions in 2020 brought about by the unique circumstances surrounding the pandemic - as a factor in the team being able to immediately hone in on his class-leading lap. Now he hopes that extra time on the track will pay off on Sunday.

“I am definitely a proponent of more than two qualifying runs. Three is definitely better for me,” Anderson said. “I think everybody likes that better. I am glad we got that extra run, it was an extra tuneup run and it showed. We got a little bit better each run with the tuneup and the engine and the racecar. It is exactly what we needed.

“Now we’ve got no excuses. We can’t say we are not ready to race on Sunday.”

Anderson will face off against Cristian Cuadra in round one on Sunday. Enders draws Fernando Cuadra Jr., while Hartford gets Bob Benza in the opening round.

Win or not on Sunday, after a longer than usual offseason following a tumultuous 2020 for so many, Anderson was glad just to be back out on track.

“Those extra two months we really didn’t know what to do with ourselves,” Anderson said. “It is not like we ran out of things to do, but you are looking around and creating things to do because it is not normal. I think we used our time wisely and stayed with our nose to the grindstone as much as we could and did as much as we possibly could. I am proud of the effort everybody put forward.

“It is cool starting on the east coast for a change. It is kind of reversed as now we are going to go to the west coast next. Who knows, maybe this is the new way.”

 

 
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