Pleased with performance of team in Las Vegas, Anderson shifts focus to Charlotte
If there is one thing that Greg Anderson has learned over the course of his storied career, it's that one must not dwell on the negative. After a disheartening early loss in Las Vegas, the five-time world champion and 101-time Pro Stock winner is eager to turn his attention to the next race on the tour – the Circle K NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte – and a fresh opportunity to come up aces in the HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro.
"You can clearly see that the heart of this team is alive and well," said Anderson, whose KB Titan Racing teammates Matt Hartford (the No. 1 qualifier) and event winner Dallas Glenn were the top performers this weekend at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "I'm very pleased with the overall results for the team, and I'm looking forward to seeing that same kind of results for the HendrickCars.com Chevrolet."
With 18 cars vying for one of the 16 raceday positions, Anderson's HendrickCars.com Chevy was better than most. He picked up a pair of bonus points as evidence (bonus points are awarded to the top three quickest cars in each session) and solidified his car's potential with a start from the No. 5 spot.
Four-wide racing is unique in that instead of a single opponent, each driver is faced with three others seeking the win light. Through qualifying, drivers are permitted four passes – one to test each lane – and in competition, lane choice is awarded by order of who was quicker in qualifying (for the first round) or in the previous round as the day progresses.
In first round at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where Anderson has claimed eight previous wins, he was second to choose a lane and selected lane three after Troy Coughlin Jr., who qualified one notch above him, elected to run in lane one. Young Cristian Cuadra was between them, and Cuadra's older brother, Fernando Jr., was on the outside to Anderson's.
The biggest challenge of four-wide racing is the staging process. Four-wide dragstrips are essentially a pair of two-lane dragstrips built side-by-side, with a center wall separating the two all the way to the top end. Each of those two tracks has a standard NHRA Christmas Tree, but atop each tree are pre-stage and stage indicators for each of the four lanes. The autostart timing system does not activate until all four vehicles are pre-staged and one vehicle has staged, the remaining drivers have just seven seconds to complete the staging process and light their second bulb. If they miss that seven-second mark, they are timed out and disqualified from making the run.
For even the most seasoned of racers, the unusual staging process can throw off a routine that has become second-nature. Reaction times are often the deciding factor, as evidenced in the second round when Hartford had the quickest car but didn't get any win light, not even a runner-up, due to a reaction time ever-so-slightly delayed by fractions of a second.
Anderson experienced a similar fate in his first-round quad as his 6.657-second pass was second-best of the four, but a .032 reaction time was the decider. Coughlin advanced with a .035 reaction and 6.638, but instead of moving forward to the next round alongside him (the quickest two of the pack move ahead in rounds one and two), Anderson finished behind the Cuadra boys, who clocked a .009, 6.669 (Cristian) and a .011, 6.676 (Fernando Jr.), respectively.
"It's frustrating to have a car that could have and should have moved on to the next round, but I can't blame the format of the race," said Anderson, a two-time four-wide winner, with victories claimed in Charlotte in both 2011 and 2012. "Yes, it's challenging, but we've shown that we know how to win. I know this team can do it – we saw that again with Dallas this weekend. And I know I can do it. A lot of people don't particularly love four-wide racing, but I'm glad we get to do it again in Charlotte in two weeks. I want another chance.
"Charlotte is a race that means a lot to us – we'll have great support from everyone at Hendrick Motorsports, and I want to make them proud of our HendrickCars.com Chevrolet. Nothing would make me happier than seeing that smile on Mr. Hendrick's face because we put his car in the winner's circle."
The Circle K NHRA Four-Wide Nationals, the fifth of 18 Pro Stock races on the 2023 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series schedule, will take place in Concord, N.C., April 28-30.
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