Don’t mess with Texas – or Erica Enders who’s a Texas girl through and through. And don’t mess with Elite Motorsports, for which Enders is the longtime headliner.

For the past three months, Internet keyboard jockeys and cruelly critical fans have had their say about her six-race slump. But this weekend, reigning and five-time Pro Stock champion Enders is getting the last word at the Thunder Valley Nationals at East Tennessee’s Bristol Dragway.

After finalizing her first No. 1 qualifying performance of the season and 30th of her career Saturday, Enders said, “We don't really have to say anything. Our scoreboard will do the talking, as it always has in the past. We’ve made big strides in the right direction for our whole organization.”

Further proof was Elite teammate Aaron Stanfield’s victory Saturday in the NHRA Pro Stock Challenge over class steamroller Dallas Glenn in the final. He gained cash for Elite Motorsports and precious Countdown points that he’ll receive once the regular season ends.

And Pro Stock qualifying ended with Elite grabbing the top three positions in the order. Enders, her 6.627-second pass from Friday, was four-thousandths of a second quicker than No. 2 Stanfield, who was a mere one-thousandth of a second ahead of No. 3 teammate Cristian Cuadra.

In Round 1 of Sunday’s eliminations, Enders will meet Mason McGaha, who edged out his father, Chris McGaha, by .016 of a second for the 16th and last berth in the field. The only unfortunate news for Elite Motorsports is that Stanfield will race No. 15 Fernando Cuadra Jr., a teammate, in the opening round, and Cristian Cuadra will line up against his brother, David, one of Elite’s newest additions.

Even so, it was a much-needed “feel-good weekend” for Enders, Stanfield, and the team.

Her 6.627-second elapsed time on the Bristol Dragway quarter-mile sprang her from a performance purgatory. And even before she even warmed up her car for the first time this weekend, she must have had an intuition that this was the time to speak up and have her say.

“I didn’t forget how to drive. Jake Hairston and Kyle Bates didn’t forget how to build horsepower. Richard Freeman did not forget how to run a team,” Enders said with the confident authority that had been waiting to show up all season. “Pro Stock has been this way for the 20 years I’ve been driving and the 20 years prior that I watched. The pendulum swings, and when it’s not swinging in your direction, it’s extremely painful. But it always comes back.”

So does Enders, who said, “It’s peaks and valleys. What we’ve been through together would tear most teams apart. And it’s what’s so coveted about our team. You can’t buy what we have,” she said.

Before qualifying started, she said, “I’m not worried. I’m really not. I have full confidence that everything will turn around. And if it doesn’t, it’s not going to change my life. We’re not curing cancer. This isn’t the end-all, be-all.

As for those anonymous know-it-alls, Enders said Friday, “I’ve deleted all my social-media apps off my phone, because I want to strangle idiots on the Internet that have no clue what they’re talking about. They sit on their couch and eat Cheetos and they watch us race, and they think they can be a Monday-morning quarterback when we’re doing all that we can. At the same time, it’s part of living in a fishbowl, right? The human aspect is it’s not always easy. It sucks to suck. It’s awful, because you spend the same amount of money and work just as hard. Some mornings you wake up and have to talk yourself into it.”

She won’t have that problem Sunday morning here at Bristol, nor will Stanfield.

She has her “fight” back. “I'm sure some are tired of hearing it, but when there's seconds left on the clock, I want the ball. I like that pressure. I love that Pro Stock is all about the driver. You have to leave with a clutch. You have to hit all your shift points as perfectly as possible and just do your best,” she said. “What we found on my car was going to be good across the board for all of our Elite Performance entries. So I think that you'll continue to see some better numbers, see some growth within our entire operation. For Aaron to park his Janec Brothers car in the winner circle for [the Challenge] was really exciting to see – and our first yellow hat of the season, No. 30 . . . we're excited about that. I'm just so thrilled that we're back. We've just worked so incredibly hard. These guys haven't had a day off in months, and you're seeing it all come to fruition. I have two new crew guys on my car this weekend, so to be able to give them our first No. 1 qualifier hat was pretty special at the top end, so that means a lot to me.”

Stanfield said, “Am I licking my chops? I don't know. I'm a young guy, so I might like to sleep in [Sunday morning]. I'll be ready to go.”

But he clearly was encouraged Saturday, as well, and he echoed Enders.

He said, “Qualifying is normally about just making a nice, clean run. So to add a little competition in there to turn on the win light and to get some payback from the last race is cool. If I just show up and do my job and I have a good race car, we've got as good a shot as anybody at winning. So I enjoy having that opportunity to win and for that ball to be in my court.

“Drag racing has got a lot of highs and lows, and we've been struggling a little bit this beginning of the season, and they've been working very hard [at the shop in Oklahoma]. We've turned it around, and I've just got a really good hot rod, a lot like I had last year. I had a really good race car pretty much all year last year. So I think we're kind of getting back to that place.

“When you turned on a lot of win lights last year, you want to continue that momentum and keep going on the rise. But unfortunately, that's just not how drag racing is. But I think it just says a lot about how hard these Elite Motorsports guys work. I mean, they've been getting after it, and it shows. So I'm thankful to be a part of it and glad we're running good again,” Stanfield said.

“I think even when we were doing good, like last year, we took it one race at a time. But I definitely feel confident. I want to turn on four win lights tomorrow. That's why we came. And past that, we want to continue this success on the future races. If we could hold two [trophies] Wallies at the end of the day tomorrow, that would be extremely good. But we got a long ways to go. That's many rounds. So we're just going to take it one at a time and just try to make the best runs each round we can.”

Enders concurred: “I can't control who’s in the lane next to me, what they're going to do. All I can control is me, my JHG Melling Performance car in our lane. So as easy as that may sound to do, it's quite challenging, but you just have to dismiss all of that, put it out of your mind and go out there and focus. And if you just want to get to the bare bones of it, all I have to do tomorrow is let go on time, four times. That's it. That's all we got to do. But it's very hard, and that's what's so intriguing about Pro Stock, the challenge of it. So definitely not going to get greedy. Just going to try to go out there and execute the best that I can and prove why we're five-time champions.”

“These past six races have been challenging to do, like pre-race and post-race press releases, because you try to be as positive as possible, but at some point you don't want to let people feel like you're blowing smoke. We're trying absolutely as hard as we can, and I know that they're not going to keep us down forever. At some point the pendulum is going to swing and things are going to turn and you just have to keep the faith and you just have to keep your head down and go to work. But it has been hard coming up with like, “Listen, we went testing. I think we're going to do good,” because you know you're not. But we really did find something this time and the scoreboard showed it. So I'm hopeful that I don't have to make any of those comments anymore and let the scoreboard do the talking.”

The start of eliminations has been moved ahead from noon to 10 a.m. ET because of an inclement-weather forecast.

Stanfield said, “It will definitely be cooler. It's been tricky out here this weekend. The sun's been on the racetrack, and it can get tricky, so it'll be cooler, and I think we might, at the beginning of the day, have some conditions we haven't seen yet.”

The Pro Stock class was not scheduled to compete in the New England Nationals at Epping, N.H., so this category simply was racing this weekend for the Bristol spoils.