{"id":66104,"date":"2019-10-24T08:43:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T15:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=66104"},"modified":"2019-10-24T08:43:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T15:43:24","slug":"2019-nhra-pro-stock-contest-will-go-down-to-the-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/2019-nhra-pro-stock-contest-will-go-down-to-the-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 NHRA Pro Stock Contest Will Go Down to the Wire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2019<\/p>\n

It looks like Pro Stock is going to go down to the wire in Pomona this year. After four races in the six-contest NHRA Mello Yello Countdown to the Championship playoffs, there remain seven drivers within 100 points of leader and two-time champion Erica Enders.<\/p>\n

Enders should watch her rearview mirror. The Elite Motorsports driver has 2395 points in a resurgent season, leading Seattle winner Matt Hartford by 28 and teammate Jeg Coughlin Jr. by 65. Early round losses have moved KB Racing\u2019s Jason Line to fourth, where he\u2019s lagging by 68 points, while Deric Kramer has 2323 fifth place points, just 72 points behind Enders.<\/p>\n

\"2019<\/p>\n

While 2017 champ Bo Butner looked exceptionally strong in the early part of Pro Stock\u2019s 18-race season (the first time this class hasn\u2019t raced the full, 24-contest campaign), he hasn\u2019t shown sea legs in the Countdown and stands in sixth place, lagging by 74 points.<\/p>\n

Sitting in seventh place is four-time champion Greg Anderson, who won the most recent race at Texas Motorplex on Sunday, earning his 94th Pro Stock win. He\u2019s just 99 points behind Enders after defeating teammate Line, Enders, Kramer and Coughlin Jr., who is aiming to earn his sixth class title.<\/p>\n

Theirs was the typical Pro Stock contest, with Anderson cutting 6.609 seconds at 209.75 mph to Coughlin\u2019s 6.610 sec. at 207.56, giving Anderson his third win of the year after nearly sweeping the tough Western Swing. The Anderson vs Coughlin duel was their 102nd meeting overall and 21st final-round contest.<\/p>\n

\"2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had so many titanic clashes with so much on the line, and I knew it would be close,\u201d Anderson said. After making some vital changes to his car between Charlotte a week earlier and Texas, \u201cI knew coming into today we had a chance. I can\u2019t tell you who\u2019s going to win this thing because everybody right now can beat everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the way it is with Pro Stock, easily the most competitive professional class in NHRA racing despite, or maybe because, all the top competitors are driving Chevrolet Camaro racecars.<\/p>\n

Coughlin Jr., after sitting sixth in the first three Countdown contests, made his own breaks in moving up to third by advancing to his 109th career final round. \u201cWe only left 21 points on the table: the 20 we could have added had we won and one extra point we didn\u2019t earn in qualifying at the front of every qualifying session,\u201d the weekend\u2019s No. 1 qualifier said.<\/p>\n

\"2019<\/p>\n

He had some help, with Enders falling to Anderson on a holeshot in the quarterfinals and Line\u2019s loss to his teammate in the first round. But with the always dangerous Hartford and Kramer, as well as the competitive Line, these next two races should be filled with excitement.<\/p>\n

All of these drivers have to see what happens in Sin City next weekend to start the month of November. Add to that the fact the season finale at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona pays points-and-a-half to all all comers, Pro Stock ought to be a last-lap win for someone. But who?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like Pro Stock is going to go down to the wire in Pomona this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":66106,"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":[5614,1259,2,3477,887,877,4066,41,7,4801,1632],"class_list":["post-66104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-countdown-to-the-championship","tag-drag-racing","tag-erica-enders","tag-greg-anderson","tag-jeg-coughlin-jr","tag-matt-hartford","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-pro-stock","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Erica-Enders-Reading-min-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-hcc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66104","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=66104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66109,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66104\/revisions\/66109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}