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<\/p>\nGreg Anderson and his HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro enter raceday at the Ford Performance NHRA Nationals on the heels of a solid qualifying effort that culminated in his 131st No. 1 and a 13th low qualifier award earned at the prestigious Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Anderson also picked up six bonus points in his quest to win a sixth world title in the challenging category of NHRA Pro Stock, and with only the Las Vegas event and the season-closing NHRA Finals remaining, the value of every point is magnified.
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\u201cThe intensity is absolutely ratcheted up. No question about it, it\u2019s now or never,\u201d said Anderson. \u201cGet \u2018er done tomorrow or go home. Your season is either going to be alive tomorrow or it\u2019s going to be over, and I don\u2019t want mine to be over.\u201d
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Anderson opened qualifying with a 6.618-second pass at 204.98 mph in his KB Titan-Racing powered HendrickCars.com entry, and that set him in the No. 4 spot. He came back in the later session on Friday with a real stunner; the 6.597, 207.02 that popped up on the scoreboard launched him to the top of the pack with a chance to secure a second consecutive No. 1 and seventh on the season. Saturday dawned overcast but with similar air, and he surpassed his previous best \u00a0with a best-of-the-session 6.596, 206.89 for three more bonus points. Although qualifying closed on a not-so-nice note with a run that simply did not meet expectations, Anderson\u2019s position at the top was secure.
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\u201cWe learned that we\u2019re not going to be perfect every time down this racetrack,\u201d said Anderson, whose ability to learn and adapt has manifested 105 Pro Stock wins over his career and made him the most winning driver in the history of the category.
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\u201cWe had three great runs before the last one, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to think about now, and we\u2019re going to come out tomorrow with a lot of confidence that my racecar is going to be great. It\u2019s been on point for two days straight, but it\u2019s going to be a hell of a battle. There are guys with blood in their eyes, and it\u2019s going to be awesome, it\u2019s just going to be awesome.\u201d
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The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway has historically been a great race for Anderson, who was tapped by Las Vegas businessman Ken Black to drive a Pro Stock car and form a team more than two decades ago. In addition to eight event trophies earned in Las Vegas since that time, Anderson has scored a plethora of hardware in the Horsepower Challenge, a bonus event formerly held at the facility.
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Anderson will need to call on a little bit of that Las Vegas magic on Sunday and rake in as many round wins as possible in his HendrickCars.com Chevy. He\u2019s in the thick of the championship chase, 90 points behind points leader and teammate Dallas Glenn, with Aaron Stanfield between, 53 points out of first. Defending Pro Stock titlist Erica Enders is trailing Anderson by 21 marks.
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The six bonus points he earned during qualifying will be added to the pile, but Anderson is focused on the big goal right now: win the race, get all the points, and arrive at the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals with two KB Titan Racing cars in the hunt.
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\u201cObviously, the [bonus points] are great, and who knows what it\u2019ll come down to, but I\u2019m looking at raceday; that\u2019s where you get the big points,\u201d said Anderson. \u201cThose round wins are 20-a-pop, and that\u2019s big. I need four of those 20-point rounds to get back in the game and have a chance going into Pomona. Hopefully I wake up on the right side of the bed, feel like an 18-year-old, and go out there and drive like one.
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\u201cWhat\u2019s most important to me right now is finding a way for KB Titan to win the championship. Hopefully, we have two great cars going into Pomona that are alive for the championship. That\u2019s what I want. That\u2019s my dream right now.\u201d
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Eliminations for the Ford Performance NHRA Nationals are set to begin at 1 a.m. MST on Sunday, Nov. 3.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published on November 3, 2024. <\/p>\n
The post Greg Anderson Locks Down 131st Career No. 1 at NHRA Nationals in Las Vegas<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greg Anderson and his HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro enter raceday at the Ford Performance NHRA Nationals on the heels of a solid qualifying effort that culminated in his 131st No. 1 and a 13th low qualifier award earned at the prestigious Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Anderson also picked up six bonus points in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96826","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"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}