{"id":90670,"date":"2023-04-20T15:59:25","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T22:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=90670"},"modified":"2023-04-20T15:59:25","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T22:59:25","slug":"elite-signs-pete-berner-for-mountain-motor-pro-stock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/elite-signs-pete-berner-for-mountain-motor-pro-stock\/","title":{"rendered":"Elite signs Pete Berner for Mountain Motor Pro Stock"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Elite Motorsports will have a two-car Mountain Motor Pro Stock entry in 2023 – Kelsey Quartuccio photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mountain Motor Pro Stock (MMPS) is taking wings within NHRA\u2019s community, with more drivers and teams signing up for the class and with acknowledged door-slammer professionals getting involved. While NHRA announced six events for this category in 2023, it gave only five concise dates while delineating the overall scheduling for all NHRA classes.<\/p>\n

At this time, fans can count on watching MMPS compete at Chicago this May, traveling to Epping, NH,\u00a0 <\/span>racing at Bandimere outside Denver, visiting the Topeka, KS heartland, and being part of Dallas\u2019 Stampede of Speed during the Camping World Drag Racing Series Countdown to the Championship. The sixth and final race has not yet been named.<\/p>\n

One of the most prolific Pro Stock teams on the National tour is already mixing up their plans to succeed in the MMPS class. Elite Motorsports initially, once NHRA announced scheduling, planned to compete with two cars for team owner Richard Freeman and five-time, reigning Pro Stock champion Erica Enders. That plan has changed.<\/p>\n

While Elite fully intends to have a pair of cars on the grid when Mountain Motor Pro Stock begins its 2023 campaign at Route 66 Raceway outside Chicago in mid-May, Freeman had decided to step back from driving one of this team\u2019s pair of Chevrolet Camaro entries, acquired through J.R. Carr\u2019s program late in 2022, and to cede that drive to an acknowledged master of the category, Pete Berner.\"\"<\/p>\n

Berner’s name has been synonymous with this class in the latter stages of the 20th century and into the 21st. He\u2019s raced to multiple IHRA world MMPS championships – and walked away from one of the most intense crashes MMPS has seen. \u201cWe already know the chemistry is there with Pete from our shared experience in the IHRA,\u201d Freeman explained. \u201cHe\u2019s a skilled driver who knows his way around these cars and I\u2019m confident he can take anything that\u2019s thrown at him out on the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cPete is the kind of guy people naturally want to root for out here and his engineering mind will be an asset to our team in more ways than one. We want to grow this program in the NHRA and that means we need to have the best drivers behind the wheel,\u201d Freeman confirmed. The fact that Berner and Frank Gugliotta, who is managing Elite\u2019s MMPS program, have a long history of working together in this class sealed the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankie and I are pretty good buddies. He\u2019s a fierce competitor,\u201d said Berner, who lives in Crete, IL, a southern suburb of Chicago. \u201cHe\u2019s great fun to race with and he\u2019s helped me win one of my world championships by defeating one of the guys who was in the running against me. We became good buddies with all of the Freemans. Out of the blue, Richard called me and asked if I would be interested in working with him and Frankie. After talking to my wife and a few of my old racing friends, we decided it was a great opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great team that Richard\u2019s put together with J.R. Carr and it\u2019s an excellent program. I\u2019m looking forward to being Erica\u2019s teammate. We\u2019ve tested together before and I was there when she got her Pro Stock license, so we go back a ways, but I\u2019ve never had the opportunity to race with her, so that\u2019s very exciting as well. She\u2019s one of the best out there, if not The best.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Berner has made plenty of laps in different MMPS cars, he still has to jump through some hoops and rid himself of some rust before the class gets underway at Joliet. \u201c just need to dust the cobwebs off and when we feel comfortable, we will start,\u201d Berner noted. \u201cIf we need to wait for Epping we will. There\u2019s been no pressure, but I think I\u2019m ready. I held the world record in that class up until a year or so ago. And those are the guys that surpassed it – so I know I\u2019m with the right team!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mountain Motor Pro Stock (MMPS) is taking wings within NHRA\u2019s community, with more drivers and teams signing up for the class and with acknowledged door-slammer professionals getting involved.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":90672,"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":[846,1704,3477,6544,7,9671,6483],"class_list":["post-90670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-chevrolet-camaro","tag-elite-motorsports","tag-erica-enders","tag-mountain-motor-pro-stock","tag-nhra","tag-pete-berner","tag-richard-freeman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Elite-Motorsports-Mountain-Motor-Pro-Stock-Camaro-min-e1682031501573.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-nAq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90670","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=90670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90676,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90670\/revisions\/90676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}