There was a time when Erica Enders wondered if she would ever make her way into veteran status. 

"As an eight-year-old kid driving junior dragsters, I couldn't fathom what was to come," Enders said. "If I could dream up a career and put it on paper, I feel like we've exceeded those expectations by far, with almost 40 wins, four world championships and K&N Challenge wins. I mean, you go down the list, world records in every door class there is. 

"I feel like it's surreal, almost, because I still feel like a totally normal kid. Although I'm getting older, yes, I'm still young at heart and young at mind, and I'm ready to battle it out."

If Enders had raced in the 80s and 90s with the stats she holds today, she'd quickly be called a "legend." It's a status she's very reluctant to accept. 

"I don't know when that'll hit me," Enders admitted. "Maybe when I retire, and you see your last stats up there, and they compare to those of the greats. To be in the class that we're in with Jeg Coughlin, Warren Johnson, Bob Glidden, myself, that have four-plus world championships, it's pretty awesome."

In a class chock full of new and youthful drivers, Enders, a seasoned veteran, indeed came up on the wrong side of the mountain. 

"I think Pro Stock was a lot different 20 years ago when I first started, and I did get to work with Bob Glidden when I drove at Jim Cunningham's and then he ran the second car over there. He taught me all kinds of things that I didn't even know there were to learn. I'm so thankful for the relationship that I had with him, but it's definitely a different era.

"I think that the mindset of the younger kids is a lot different than ... I only speak for myself ... than mine was coming in. I was so gracious and humbled to be there, to have the opportunity to race against legends and heroes of mine as a kid, that I used to sit in a laundry basket on the living room floor, pretending like I was driving a Pro Stock car.

"I don't know if they truly understand the opportunity at hand and what it takes to get here. There were long, long, really frustrating roads to get here. When you get to jump in state-of-the-art equipment and just run right at the top, you don't get to learn what it actually takes. I'm not being ugly. I don't want that to be twisted. I think it's great that they have that opportunity, but I feel like going through what I went through until I got here at Elite Motorsports definitely made me the person and the driver that I am today."

Additionally, she had the odds stacked against her being a new and female driver. 

"You have to dig yourself out of a hole to get to ground zero before you even start to get looked at, because if you do a great job, well, it's because you're in great equipment with great people," Enders explained. "If you screw up, you screw up because you're a dumbass. Being a girl is definitely different out here, and it presents its own battles in addition to the ones that are already there to be successful in this class. It was a tough mountain to climb, and I still learn, and I still go through a lot of stuff that I wouldn't think about beforehand, but again, thankful for the opportunity. It'll be a great story to tell one day.

"As a kid starting out in Pro Stock, again being a girl, you're judged under a different microscope. If you have any sort of emotion, like, uh-uh (negative). This ain't the place for it, so I think it's very different.

"When you win Indy or you win a world championship and these grown men cry, I think it's amazing because it shows what this means to all of us who have sacrificed our entire lives for it. If you're a girl like myself, Angelle, and you get down there and you have a little emotion, they chew you up and spit you out. I think it's cool to see the emotion because it just shows how meaningful all of this is."

Enders, with two decades of drag racing under her belt, and while there are facets of life, she'd like to experience, she's going to keep on keeping on.

"Eventually, one day. I think that there's life after this," Enders admitted. "I've always said I'm going to do it as long as I can, but at the same time, maybe one day I might want to have a family, and I'm getting older, but I don't know what the future holds. That's part of being a Christian, right? You trust the bigger plan and you just put one foot in front of the other."