Mon, 3 Jul 2006, 07:37 AM NHRA POWERade Series Midseason Teleconference with Greg Anderson

Courtesy of NHRA Communications Photo copyright 2006 Auto Imagery, Inc.

MADISON, Ill. --

Anderson won the King Demon Challenge

NHRA would like to welcome the members of the media participating in today's teleconference which will include the four POWERade Series points leader at this midway point of the 2006 season (12 of 23 events complete).

NHRA featured some incredible points races in 2005. 2006 has the makings of an impressive encore performance. The average lead in the four NHRA POWERade Series categories is a mere 24 and a half points, and there are a total of 15 drivers within 120 points or six rounds of first place.

DRC will bring the NHRA transcripts from this teleconference in four features, today with Pro Stock point leader Greg Anderson.

THE MODERATOR: Greg Anderson, winner of the last three Pro Stock World Championships. He's back in first place again. He's in first place by two points as we reach the halfway in the season over teammate Jason Line.

You won the first event this year. You've led the series wire to wire. Can you talk about Pro Stock this year. It's been crazy. Eight different winners to start the season. You have six drivers right now within six rounds of first place. Seems like you throw a dart every week. Can you shed some light on that class, why it's been so close this year?

GREG ANDERSON: It is pretty incredible. The best way I can describe it, there's been a lot of teams really, really step up their program in the last year. It's funny. We as racers, usually we can get a feel by the time we get to Sunday morning who has the best chance of winning the race. We can't do it any more. There's so many good cars right now. You don't know who is going to qualify No. 1. It's a crapshoot who makes the best run of the dozen cars that are capable of it. The same thing on race day. If you qualify on race day, you absolutely have got a great shot of winning. There are so many great cars right now.

It's kind of been tough on us. Everybody is so even, we don't have the advantage we had over the last couple years. We're pressing harder, trying to make that perfect run every time, which we didn't necessarily have to do before. Usually when you do that, you make a few mistakes. Everybody is pressing hard in this class right now. Everybody is running well, but at the same time making mistakes along the way because the competition is so tough. You're pressed to make that perfect run every time out there or you're going to get beat.

It's really, really interesting right now for the fans, for the media. It's also creative for us as drivers and as a team, and especially me coming up the last couple three years where we had kind of a cushion on the field. We don't have that cushion any more. Now it's down to we have to execute perfectly. Bottom line is we haven't executed perfectly since Pomona. We're lucky to still have that point lead to be honest with you. Too many first- and second-round losses where either I didn't do a good job driving or the car didn't perform like it should have. Any time you're going to make a mistake in this class right now, you're going to get beat. It would be easy to say everybody is screwing up and nobody wants to take the points lead. It's not necessarily that. Really a lot of guys are doing a great job, so many guys doing a great job, everybody is able to beat anybody any more. It's just wild right now. I guess that's what everybody wanted. They want parity. We have parity in this class right now. It should be very exciting for everybody, except for us the drivers.

THE MODERATOR: Greg, talk about the Western Swing. Very favorable to you in the past. Talk about your mindset going into these next three events.

ANDERSON: It's been very good to me. Really, we've passed the halfway point in the season. Got 12 races down, 11 to go. Before you realize it, you're past halfway. You come into the Western Swing which is very, very tough on everybody. Three really very different racetracks. Denver, which is completely a one-off deal. By the way, I'm up here in Denver right now testing. I think there's about a dozen Pro Stock cars up here right now. We're all testing for the race here because it's so different, it's so tricky to figure this place out. Through the western swing, you have three completely different races. You come here, it's a one-off deal. Then you go back to sea level at Seattle, cool temperatures. Then you go to Sonoma where you have sea level conditions, a lot of times 90 degrees. Just completely different scenario every time.

It really comes down to crunch time now. It's too late to wait any longer to make your run. It's the time to make your run. If the guy can come out of the Western Swing with a points lead, if you look at stats from years past, he's probably going to be the guy with the best chance of winning the championship.

Two years ago we swept the Swing. I think we won only one of the three races last year. Still we started running good on the Swing last year and really that was what propelled us to perform well the rest of the year. Very, very important. That's why we're at Denver right now testing. I think the swing will make or break a lot of people's seasons.

THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions.

Q. You went from a dominant (three) year (stretch) to looking over your shoulder. Did all these guys catch up or have you slowed down? What do you attribute the parity to this year?

ANDERSON: In reality I guess if I look at it, we've been trying to figure that out all year, too. Basically the rest of them have caught up. It's so tough in this class to keep your technology to yourself. We probably broke through to a few things that other people hadn't in the last couple years. We were able to hang on to those secrets, those breakthroughs for a while.

It just seems like you can't keep it to yourself forever. Things leak out. The more things leak out, I lost a key engine shop guy, my head engine builder I lost in the middle of last season, went across town to (Erica Enders') Victor Cagnazzi team; he brought a lot of technology, secrets with him that we had. Now you have those things to another team. Things leak from that team to other teams. That's how things happen. You just have to be able -- if you look at Pro Stock cars, people laugh at why we always cover things up. We cover our engines up all the time. We cover the backs of our cars up, our suspensions up all the time. We have covers over our intake manifolds. People think, 'What are you crazy, why do you have to do that?' It's so tough and so dog-eat-dog, you have to be careful with all your stuff. Any breakthrough you make, any secret you find, you have to hang on as long as you can before it filtrates through the class. Really we've had a lot of that filtration in the last six months and it shows. Everybody stepped up to basically the same level performance-wise, power-wise, and now it comes down to executing on the racetrack. They've also raised their game. They've paid a lot of attention to our team, how our team operates. I think I have a very professional team with a lot of great guys working on it, a couple of great crew chiefs. People can kind of sit back and watch the formula and see how it works out, a lot of them have copied that formula. A lot of people have bolstered their teams with key people, they have learned how to work together as teams. That's kind of what we showed them. I guess we created our own worst enemy. We showed everybody how to do it, now they're doing it. It's really up to us to find a way to make that breakthrough again and get back ahead of the pack. Right now we're a little bit stagnant it seems. They've caught us. It's up to us to find another way to put some ground on them.

Q. What areas are you working in now that you feel can give you the advantage that you had last season?

ANDERSON: Well, obviously our generation three engine, we're still working on that. We still haven't debuted that. We still have high hopes for that. Haven't been able to spend enough time on it because of the way the season has gone. We haven't been able to abandon the current engines we have and just pay attention to the new ones because we're in such a tough points battle. We have to keep chiseling at that. If we get that up to speed, I think we can make some gains again. We're probably going to debut another new car when we come out here to Denver. I debuted a new car here last year at Denver. That's when things kind of took off for me last year. Hopefully we can make that jump in the next month or so, maybe even on this western swing, and never look back.

Q. As tight as it is, there's not much room for experimentation.

ANDERSON: There's not. That's the tough part. You can't abandon the things you've got that have gotten you this far. You can't slip up at all. You get in kind of safe mode, think we're going to have to execute better, do a better job of driving. We haven't done that so far. We have to change that, make better car runs with our race car, got to do a better job of driving, both (teammate) Jason (Line) and myself, chip away at that new engine. Hopefully in another month or so we'll have an edge back.

THE MODERATOR: I'll let you get back to testing. Sounds like you need every minute you can have out there.

ANDERSON: Pretty interesting. About a dozen of us up here. Like every national event, every doggone team is within 3/100ths.

THE MODERATOR: Good luck. We'll see you in Denver.

GREG ANDERSON: Thanks.