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POMONA, Calif. --
The first round of qualifying opened with steady passes for both of the Team Summit Pro Stock drivers; Anderson settled into the No. 3 spot with a cool 6.578-second pass at 210.08, while Line was No. 5 on a 6.584, 210.21. With a good baseline, crew chief Rob Downing had both of the KB Racing Summit Racing Chevrolet Camaro Pro Stockers set up for success heading into the second session. Mother Nature was doing her best to infuse anxiety into the situation, and rain was pressing in on all sides, but the final round of the day was completed in full for the Pro Stock competitors. Line raced to a 6.563 with a big speed of 210.93 mph to move into the second position, and Anderson blistered the first 60 feet of the racetrack with his career-best early time and held on for a 6.557, 210.60 that moved him into the No. 1 spot. "We saw today that there are a dozen cars that can run low e.t. [elapsed time]. I predicted it, and it's true," said Anderson, who, along with Line, held a large advantage over the competition throughout last season until the gap began to slowly close as the year came to an end. "There will be cars that run even better tomorrow. It's a different landscape this year, without a doubt, and all I can say is I told you so. We've done our best job to make sure it wouldn't be that way, but unfortunately it looks like that's going to be the way it is. "There will be some great racing this year, though, and that means we'll have to do better jobs as drivers and crew chiefs without the performance advantage we had before. I didn't run any more speed than anybody else did today, and obviously that kind of translates to the engine performance. We just got off the starting line a little better, had a better 60-foot time, and the crew chief did a better job than the others did today. That's why I got the pole, and that can certainly change tomorrow." Entering the 2017 season of NHRA's Mello Yello Drag Racing Series, Anderson has amassed a remarkable 87 No. 1 qualifier awards. Six of those have been at the Winternationals, and including the NHRA Finals held at Auto Club Raceway, he has been No. 1 in Pomona 10 times. Anderson is particularly fond of the historic Pomona facility across the board. In all, he has 12 Pomona wins - six at the Winternationals and six earned at the final race of the season. His strong history in Pomona could lend to a feeling of confidence, but the veteran racer knows it can turn on a dime - particularly when the weather fluctuates wildly, which it is predicted to do over the course of the weekend. "We had a great racetrack today," said Anderson. "I know it's not great for the fans when it's cloudy and misty like this, but the racecars love it. The racetrack just couldn't be better, and it's fun to drive my Summit Racing Chevy Camaro when it's like this. You can throw everything you've got at it, and the racetrack just holds it. That's what we did today, but tomorrow will be a different day, and Sunday is supposed to be sunny. It'll be a whole different deal going through the weekend."
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