Defending a world championship is certainly not easy.

One thing is for sure, reigning NHRA Pro Stock world champion Erica Enders isn’t backing down from the challenge – at all.

Enders won her third national event out of the last four, capturing the title at the Kansas Nationals Sunday at Heartland Park Topeka.

Enders clocked a 6.584-second run at 209.33 mph to defeat Greg Anderson’s 6.591-second lap at 209.14 mph.

The final run capped a dominating performance as she was the quickest in all three qualifying sessions and the fastest in each round of eliminations.

“My guys are really incredible and it just speaks volumes of what they are capable of when they are given the tools that they need,” said Enders who pilots the Elite Motorsports Camaro for Richard Freeman. “That’s what Richard Freeman has provided them and I’m just really proud. The last time we did this was Norwalk last year. We qualified on the pole and were low E.T. every round of qualifying and every round of eliminations. It’s definitely a feat, especially in Pro Stock as competitive as it is. Hat’s off to my guys, they are just absolutely incredible.”

This was Enders 15th career NHRA national event win, which is the third most by a female behind Angelle Sampey (41 wins) and Shirley Muldowney (18). Enders-Stevens national events wins this year came at Las Vegas, and Houston. In Vegas, she also captured the $50,000 K&N Horsepower Challenge for the second consecutive year April 11.

Enders upended Mark Hogan, Jonathan Gray, Larry Morgan and Anderson Sunday.

“I missed the tree a little bit against Larry Morgan up there,” Enders said. “I knew I was late and I was kind of looking over to see where he was. It was only a seven thousandths margin of victory, so I guess if we had a lucky round that was it for sure. I would have hated to give that one up on the starting line, but again my guys gave me a great race car to finish with, and that’s all that matters.”

It didn’t take Enders long to get her new Camaro in the winner’s circle, all of two races.

“I kind of got tired of answering hate mail about why we switched race cars,” said Enders, who lost to Anderson in the semifinals at the last event at Atlanta. “To be quite honest, at the very get go I didn’t want to let go of the car that I drove last year because we had such an awesome relationship and a lot of success together. I had over 320 runs in that car, which is a lot, and this round here was like No. 29 on this car so it still very new and we are still learning all about her. Rick and Rickie Jones built it and it is a tremendous masterpiece and we are just going to get better.” 

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