Dispose of the voodoo doll. Unleash the sage. Banish the demons. Greg Anderson is fervently wishing that his string of misfortunes has come to an end.

Following a tumultuous start to the weekend that ranks among the most chaotic for an individual competitor in recent memory, Anderson managed to clinch a surprising No. 1 qualifier spot Saturday at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway.

“I cannot remember” a weekend like this, Anderson said. “It’s kind of funny, and all you can do is just shake your head and chuckle. There’s no sense in getting mad about it. Mistakes are made and there is nothing you can do about it. It’s drag racing. I guess if things were going bad and the car was running poorly, the driver was driving poorly, then maybe I’d get a little bit mad, but I don’t have room for that.

“The future looks good for us. We’re in a good place right now, and if we can just clean up these mistakes we’ll be fine. But, no, I cannot remember a crazy day like today. We are certainly going to have a lot of stories to tell about tonight.” 

After three lost runs – all for various reasons – Anderson was able to hold on to the top spot behind the wheel of his HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro to take the 125th pole position of his career and his first of 2024.

The lap, a 6.500-second pass at 210.90 mph from Q1 on Friday afternoon, survived a wave of challengers led by Cristian Cuadra, who came up just shy of his second career top qualifier award. Cuadra was second on the ladder with a 6.507 at 210.18 mph, followed closely by Aaron Stanfield, who recorded a 6.508 at 209.92 mph. Jeg Coughlin (6.509) and Deric Kramer (6.510) rounded out the top five.  

After pacing the field right off the trailer, Anderson’s troubles began in Q2 on Friday evening. When his car wouldn’t start due to an issue with the car’s Electronic Control Unit, he was forced to miss the run. Despite the cooler conditions, his time held.

On Saturday, the team’s troubles continued when the crew forgot to reconnect a safety wire during the mad dash to diagnose Friday’s problem. As a result, Anderson’s quad-winning pass during Q3 -- a 6.512 at 210.41 mph -- was disqualified due to a safety violation, and he was forced to vacate his spot in the final round of the Mission #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge.    

“We had an issue last night on the starting line where the car wouldn’t start,” Anderson said. “We basically traced it back to the ECU; it lost spark to the spark plugs so it wouldn’t fire. In a mad dash to try and get the car started, one of my guys disconnected a safety wire which is hooked to the air bottle in the car.   

“We went back to the pits, diagnosed the problem and fixed that, but we forgot to plug the wire back. We came up today and made a great run, but a single mistake by one of my crew guys was labeled a safety violation and we had to cancel the run. So we lost the run and obviously were disqualified as a first-round winner of the #2Fast2Tasty Challenge.”  

To add insult to injury, Anderson’s replacement in that specialty race – six-time NHRA champion Erica Enders – went on to win the challenge while Anderson’s fourth and final qualifying pass of the weekend was a dud as he was forced to shut it off early.

While certainly a disappointment, Anderson was pleased with the runs that he did make and feels confident entering Sunday that his gremlins are behind him and he can focus on going rounds.   

“It’s certainly a bummer, but the car ran great,” Anderson said. “The car ran great, the driver did his job, but it has been an absolutely crazy day. But it is over now and we’re going to forget all about that and realize that we got the yellow hat, we had a strong race car through qualifying, and we’re ready for race day.

“You can’t make a mistake on race day in this class or you lose. We’ve got to clean up the mistakes, but the product is there. When you have a day like today, I think it gets the guys a little bit sharper and on their toes and double and triple checking everything. I feel really good that we will not have a mistake tomorrow.

“We’ll make damn sure all the wires are connected before we come up for first round tomorrow.”