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All of motor sport is cyclical. One day you\u2019re at the top of the mountain, the next you\u2019re wondering why the parts keep breaking\u2026<\/p>\n
Erica Enders has had a rough go since her dual NHRA Mello Yello Pro Stock championship years of 2014 and 2015. Driving then, as now, for Elite Motorsports, the first woman to win an NHRA Pro Stock race is having a resurgence in the 2019 18-race Pro Stock campaign, driving one of Elite\u2019s Chevrolet Camaros. After qualifying for the Countdown to the Championship, Enders\u2019 victory in the second of six races in the Countdown has her sitting only 11 points behind leader Jason Line.<\/p>\n
After the 2015 season where they raced with Chevrolet, Elite changed manufacturers. That year, Enders and teammate Jeg Coughlin Jr drove Dodge Dart race cars. It wasn\u2019t the wisest move by the team, which had agreed to use Dodge products before NHRA drastically changed the playing field in Pro Stock, mandating electronic fuel injection (EFI) and new body configurations to suit the adjustment to EFI. Dodge wasn\u2019t prepared as well as Chevrolet for the changes and Elite, along with its drivers, suffered a year\u2019s worth of mediocrity before returning to the Chevy camp in 2017.<\/p>\n
It took both the team and Enders some time to regain their footing and it appears they\u2019re back in their prime again, ready to contend for a championship. Earning her 24th Pro Stock victory at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway outside St. Louis after posting her second consecutive No. 1 qualifying slot, Enders said it \u201cfelt like dog years\u201d since her last Pro Stock victory at the springtime Charlotte four-wide race in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cI finally got a trophy,\u201d she exclaimed in the Winners Circle, after being runner-up in two of the last three races. \u201cThis is what perseverance is all about. You just don\u2019t quit; you just keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Enders\u2019 lap of 6.598 seconds at 208.36 mph in her Melling Performance Elite Motorsports Camaro allowed her to eclipse Matt Hartford\u2019s Camaro run at 6.621\/207.30. \u201cWe just had to pick ourselves up and we redeemed ourselves after our poor performance in Reading,\u201d where she qualified No. 1 but fell in the second round to eventual runner-up Fernando Cuadra, whose car is prepared by competitor KB Racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ready for the remaining four races,\u201d the third of which takes place next weekend at zMAX Dragway outside Charlotte, N.C. \u201cI put my money on us. It\u2019s all coming together at the right time,\u201d Enders said. \u201cIt feels like it\u2019s been an eternity since we last won in 2018. We just continue to keep our heads down and working hard, and this definitely means a lot to our entire program. I knew every time we fired that bad boy up, we were going to go out and make a really great pass.\u201d<\/p>\n
It takes eight \u201creally great\u201d passes a weekend to win a race, although there are times when a competitor\u2019s issues can give another driver an opportunity to move ahead. For Erica Enders, is the wait finally over for a third title? Has the tide turned for Elite Motorsports?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Erica Enders, is the wait finally over for a third title? Has the tide turned for Elite Motorsports?<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":65535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[5614,2,1704,3477,41,7,1632],"class_list":["post-65534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-drag-racing","tag-elite-motorsports","tag-erica-enders","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Enders-at-the-hit-Reading-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-h30","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65537,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65534\/revisions\/65537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}