Lane choice costs Anderson
(8-6-2012) KENT, WA – Entering Sunday’s final eliminations of the NHRA Northwest Nationals in Seattle, Wash. Greg Anderson and the Summit Racing team knew they had their work cut out for them. Despite being able to put together four solid passes and claim the fifth starting position, they had yet to reach a suitable comfort level with their race car’s tune-up, a crucial element when dealing with the hot and greasy Pacific Raceways surface.
Fortunately, things went according to plan in the opening stanza, as Anderson used a quick 6.607-second, 210.05 mph pass to easily defeat veteran Kurt Johnson. However, his time fell eight thousandths of a second shy of maintaining lane choice for his quarterfinal encounter against Erica Enders, a distinct disadvantage as only two wins out of the total of 15 contested came from the right side.
Although Anderson was able to muster a competitive 6.646-second, 209.62 mph run, it was not enough to overcome his opponent’s 6.638-second pass, putting an early end to his day. Afterwards, the three-time Seattle winner admitted he was looking forward to today’s end of the three-race Western Swing, as it would allow the team to spend valuable testing time familiarizing themselves with their race cars.
“Getting a handle on our Summit Racing Camaro is a work in progress, and as a result we just didn’t do as good a job as we should have today keeping up with the racetrack,” said Anderson. “It bit a lot of people, but the bottom line is that you have to be aggressive when the track was like it was today and we were just a bit off.
“Once we lost lane choice for the second round, we were really fighting an uphill battle, because the right lane was nowhere near as good as the left. Unfortunately, we ended up smoking the tires, putting an early end to our day.
“This was absolutely the toughest track we’ve raced on this year, and we just didn’t catch up with it, which shows we still have a lot to learn about these race cars. That’s why we’re going to go home and spend some on track time with them, seeing if we can make them better, because they are not where we need them to be. Today was just not a great day, so we’re going to regroup and try to get it done in Brainerd.”
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