After four consecutive starts from the No. 1 position, seeing Greg Anderson\u2019s name in the No. 4 spot after final qualifying for the Gerber Collision & Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals may have come as a bit of a surprise. But for the most winning driver in the history of the class, the position is insignificant heading into raceday. Six-time Pro Stock world champion Anderson is fully focused on going the distance in his HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro as he pursues the 114th victory of his career, regardless of where he is on the ladder. That being said, the challenge will begin early as he is set to square off with son Cody.
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The first round in Chicago will mark the second time this season that father and son have met on Sunday. At the season-opener in Gainesville, Cody won his first round of eliminations over Pro Stock veteran Greg Stanfield, but then it was Dear Old Dad that got the nod in round two.
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\u201cObviously, we want this to happen in the final round, but we\u2019ll just have to get a couple of these out of the way before we get to find our way to a final together,\u201d said Anderson. \u201cThe bottom line is that we were both a little off in qualifying, and that\u2019s why we ended up stuck together first round. That\u2019s just what happens when you don\u2019t do a good job in qualifying, you have to race someone you really don\u2019t want to. We\u2019re going to have fun with it, but don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I want to kick his butt and he wants to kick mine. There are no games.\u201d
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Anderson opened his Chicago qualifying bid with a 6.575-second pass at 209.56 to initially step into the No. 6 spot. In the later session on Friday, he raced to a 6.553, 209.88 that bumped him up two positions to fourth. Saturday\u2019s two qualifying sessions took place in air that was weighted with water after morning showers at Route 66 Raceway, and in the early session, the naturally aspirated factory hot rods showed the impact as few improvements were made. Anderson put up a 6.604 and did not move from the No. 4 spot, and although his 6.553 in the final qualifying round was best of the lot, it wasn\u2019t enough to move him out of fourth.
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\u201cWe were struggling with the starting line out here; it\u2019s just different than what we\u2019ve been on all year, but that is no excuse,\u201d said Anderson. \u201cWe certainly have plenty of experience here, plenty of notes, but we still struggled. By the final session, we were better, but tomorrow we need to be better yet.\u201d
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Anderson\u2019s history in Chicago includes possession of the track record for speed thanks to a 212.39 mph pass made in 2019. He\u2019s also a two-time winner at Route 66 Raceway, with trophies earned in 2011 and 2016.
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So far this season, the HendrickCars.com Chevy has appeared in two finals and claimed victory at the Lucas Oil Winternationals in Pomona. In addition to strong Sunday performances, Anderson has been picking up bonus qualifying points along the way. He\u2019s currently No. 2 in the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Pro Stock standings, 76 marks behind reigning world champ Dallas Glenn. It\u2019s early yet, but making up ground on Glenn \u2013 while also holding the competition at arm\u2019s length \u2013 would certainly be beneficial to Anderson\u2019s cause.
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\u201cRight now, our Achilles heel is low gear, and we\u2019re working to get that better for tomorrow,\u201d said Anderson. \u201cThat\u2019s what it\u2019s going to take to win. It all comes down to those first 60 feet.\u201d
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Eliminations for the Gerber Collision & Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals are scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m. Sunday at Route 66 Raceway.<\/p>\n
The post Greg Anderson Isn\u2019t Singing the Blues; He\u2019s on a Mission Heading Into Raceday in Chicago<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After four consecutive starts from the No. 1 position, seeing Greg Anderson\u2019s name in the No. 4 spot after final qualifying for the Gerber Collision & Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals may have come as a bit of a surprise. But for the most winning driver in the history of the class, the position is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}