Ninth on Friday, Anderson Targets Change and Improvement in Joliet

Ninth on Friday, Anderson Targets Change and Improvement in Joliet

Event:  15th annual NHRA Route 66 Nationals

Location: Route 66 Raceway, Joliet, Illinois

Day/Date: Friday, June 29, 2012

The first day of qualifying for the NHRA Route 66 Nationals in Joliet, Illinois provided racers in the Full Throttle Drag Racing Series with challenging conditions, with both high heat and humidity robbing the naturally-aspirated Pro Stock engines of valuable horsepower, putting a premium on getting the proper tune-up to maximize their performance.   This proved to be an even greater task for Greg Anderson and the Summit Racing team who are still determining the performance envelope for their new Chevrolet Camaro.

Although they were able to make two representative runs, their 6.649-second, 207.15 mph best in the evening session found them ninth midway through the qualifying procedure, a standing Anderson looked to better during one of his final two attempts on Saturday.

“We were definitely off today, so we’ll make some changes for tomorrow,” said Anderson.  “We know this Summit Racing Camaro can run better than it did, and it’s naturally disappointing for us to come off the trailer like that, but we’re going to keep digging, trying different things.  We believe we learned something tonight with Jason’s car that we’ll apply to both Ronnie (Humphrey, who runs the Genuine Hotrod Hardware Pontiac through the KB Racing team) and my car tomorrow and we’ll see what happens.

“The fun races are the ones where you come off the trailer and you’re fast, but sometimes it’s just a battle, which is what we have this weekend.  We’ve had them before and we’ve gone on to win the race, so we’re not about to give up, but we have to find something tomorrow to put us in a better position for Sunday.  It’s not fast off the trailer, but we have to make it fast.”