Greg Anderson will be the first person to admit that this season has been one for the young guns.

With Anderson and Erica Enders -- winners of the last four championships in the Pro Stock category -- struggling during the early part of the schedule, names like Camrie Caruso, Troy Coughlin Jr., Dallas Glenn and Deric Kramer have filled the void, collecting Wallys and dominating the conversation.

But, as they say in life, you can’t keep a good man -- or woman -- down.

While it looked early on like this might be a year for a new face to rise to the top of the Pro Stock ranks, the last few races have proven that veterans like Anderson and Enders are not going to go down without a fight.

“When you have four or five races where you just can’t get it done and you keep getting beat by all of the young cats, you do think, ‘Will I ever win again? Can I still do this?’” Anderson said. “It’s great to get reassurance that I still can. (Enders) is absolutely back on top of her game. She’s going to be a hell of a challenge through the playoffs. But I expect to be, too.

“It looked like, for the first three or four months of the year, that it was going to be the year for the young guns -- and it still may be. But we’re not going to lay down easily. We’ve got a little bit of experience at this and we’re not going to go down without a fight. We both seem to be working our way back to the top and peaking at the right time.”

One week after securing his highest starting position of the season and driving to his first final round of the year, Anderson drove his HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro to his first No. 1 of the season Saturday at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway.

Anderson was quickest in three of the four sessions covering the first two days of competition, with his 6.587-second pass at 205.79 mph from Friday proving enough to hold off Matt Hartford for his first pole position of the year.

In fact, with wild swings in temperatures from Friday to Saturday, Anderson was especially pleased to show so much consistency in picking up his 122nd career No. 1 heading into another weather change Sunday.

“It’s very gratifying to know that you can run in the heat, you can run in the cool, you can run in any conditions,” Anderson said. “I am very proud of the job the guys have done on my car this weekend. I’ve certainly got a great hot rod, no question about that. We’ll see if I can get up on the wheel and do a little better job than I did behind the wheel today. I got my butt spanked in the first round of the Mission Challenge today and I don’t want that to happen again.”

Hartford just missed out on the top spot on Friday, falling one-thousandth of a second behind Anderson in Q2 with a 6.598-second effort at 205.54 mph. Enders was third with a 6.603 at 207.27 mph, while Cristian Cuadra (6.606) and Kramer (6.606) rounded out the top five. All of those times carried over from the first day of competition, with no one able to get close to the numbers produced during a much cooler Friday.

Anderson added the quickest pass of the day on Saturday as well -- a 6.642 during Q3 -- however it was not enough to advance him to the final of the Mission 2Fast2Tasty Challenge in a holeshot loss to Kramer. Instead, Enders earned the win in the special race-within-a-race. Despite not advancing, it was a great opportunity for Anderson to experiment with the car on a throwaway day with the weather preventing drivers from much movement on the ladder.

“I said yesterday we were going to experiment a little today,” Anderson said. “We had a free day, so to speak, so we did. We definitely learned something this morning and definitely went over the edge tonight and it threw it back in our face, but you learn either way. Whether you go fast or you’re slower, you still learn. It was definitely a good learning day. There’s a million things you can adjust on these cars and it is easy to adjust yourself right out of the ballgame. We tried a lot of things on a lot of different cars today, so I think it was a very educational day for all of us here at KB Titan.”

Still seeking his first win of the season and trying to move up the ladder with only one race to go until the start of the Countdown to the Championship, Anderson is excited about what Sunday has in store with lower temperatures setting up a tasty battle.

Anderson will face David Cuadra in Sunday's opening round.

“Tomorrow will be a more fun day for racers,” Anderson said. “The cars will be fast. It will be run what you brung, basically. You can throw everything you have at the racetrack and it should hold. Those are exciting days for us. That’s how we love to race. We’ll see what tomorrow brings and hopefully we’ve got some good fortune. I’ve got the car to beat, so I need to make sure it stays out front.”