READING, Pa. (Oct. 6) – Husky Liners driver Erica Enders-Stevens remains in contention for the Pro Stock championship despite a second-round loss during the Auto-Plus NHRA Nationals on Sunday at Maple Grove Raceway.
Enders-Stevens is fifth in the Pro Stock standings, 114 points out of the lead with two races remaining in the Countdown to the Championship. The next race is in two weeks in Las Vegas.
“We’ll just go to Vegas with a clean head and do the best we can,” Enders-Stevens said. “The good news is we have a couple weeks off. We’ve been on the road for a month straight, but now we get to go home and regroup. We’ll work on the car and head to Vegas fresh. I’m looking forward to it, and we’ve got to battle back.”
Enders Stevens and the Cagnazzi Racing team have rallied in the six-race Countdown. She won at Gateway Motorsports Park last week and has climbed from ninth to fifth in the points standings. That came after sitting out six of the eight races before the Countdown, but Enders-Stevens’ Chevrolet Camaro clearly has been one of the cars to beat since returning.
On Sunday she took out Buddy Perkinson in the first round on a holeshot before falling to Allen Johnson. Perkinson ran a faster elapsed time, 6.603 seconds at 210.18 mph to Enders-Stevens’ 6.605 at 208.62 mph, but she pulled off a lightning-quick .008-second reaction time to get the victory.
“I knew I had to be up on the wheel against Buddy,” Enders-Stevens said. “I was happy to get those 20 points.”
Johnson, the defending Pro Stock champion, made a run of 6.588 seconds at 209.43 mph in the second round to outrun her pass of 6.595 at 209.59 mph
“It was going to be a day of thousandths all day long,” Enders-Stevens said. “You have to be killer on the (Christmas) Tree and you have to make really good runs. My guys gave me a great car, and we made one of our best runs of the weekend second round.”
Enders-Stevens and her team get a two-week break before the NHRA Toyota Nationals on Oct. 25-27 at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.