The long, long wait is over for Matt Hartford.

Hartford debuted in NHRA’s Pro Stock class in 2006 and finally in his 80th race in the class he captured his first career Wally Sunday at the Spring Nationals near Houston.

Hartford clocked a 6.522-second time at 211.36 mph to defeat two-time world champion Erica Enders’ 6.570-second lap in the finals at Royal Purple Raceway.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Hartford, who made his inaugural appearance in the finals. “I have let the clutch out a few times and I’ve lost way more than I have ever won. We struggled in qualifying and we qualified 11th and we should have qualified third or fourth. The best air was Friday night and we completely missed the setup. We started in the back of the field and had to work our way through.”

Hartford pilots the Total Seal Chevy Camaro. He was a 66 career NHRA Pro Stock national event winner. The Arizona driver on Sunday beat Chris McGaha, Tanner Gray, Jeg Coughlin and Enders.

“We earned this,” Hartford said. “I didn’t leave on any of them. Let’s just make this clear they all left on me. We just did a better job with our car today than the other teams.”

Hartford acknowledged he was considering not competing in Pro Stock this season.

“Over the winter I was done,” he said. “I said I’m not coming back and Richard Freeman called me and said we need cars and you will have good power, you will have as good of power as what we have. The joke in our pits is I have his fifth-best motor, well his fifth-best motor is as good as his best motor. That’s the joke I always tell Richard if I had your real power we could really do something. When you have horsepower, this is fun. When you struggle like I have for so many years and have carnage and don’t have power the fun starts going away.”

Hartford was quick to credit his team for his car’s performance.

“My crew is all part time, they all have day jobs, including myself,” he said. “We are some of the closest-knit people you can bring together. We have a good time out here. To us, this is not work. We have a great time, we go out and we have a nice dinner, we have a couple of beers and we get up in the morning and we’re excited to be here. Without those guys working as hard as they do, I wouldn’t be here. My driving is not why we won today, that is a fact.”

Hartford has competed in three of the five NHRA races this season and had one round win in Las Vegas before this weekend.

“When we left Vegas, we thought we had a really good car setup,” Hartford said. “Our goal when we came here (to Houston) was to try and go to the pole. Om Friday night that’s exactly what we tried to do, and we made the wrong call. Even though we lost in the semis in Las Vegas, we had a lot of direction that we felt would be beneficial, so we came to Houston and I’m glad I did.”

In the finals against Enders, Hartford knew he had a hefty challenge in front of him.

“I knew I couldn’t leave on her, she is as good as it gets and I’m not that good,” Hartford said. “But, we were able to tune the car and we had enough power to drive around her at the end.”

The next national events on the schedule are the Four-Wide Nationals April 27-29, in Charlotte, N.C., and the Southern Nationals May 4-6 in Atlanta, but Hartford doesn’t plan on being at either one.

“The next race we are scheduled to go to is Topeka (Kan., May 18-20), and there are two races between that race,” Hartford said. “I know I’m going to get a lot of pressure to go to Charlotte and I’m probably not going to go to Charlotte. It doesn’t matter because the next time we unload that car we know that we have a car that can win.”