Ask any racer, and those that are honest will admit that while drag racing may be addictive, winning makes it even more so.  Guys like Summit Racing Equipment Pro Stock driver Greg Anderson, who has a house full of NHRA national event trophies interspersed with the occasional POWERade Series championship gold, know what it’s like to win.  With winning comes losing.  It’s just the natural order of things.  But, it’s how you handle those losses that will ultimately determine your reputation.  Throwing your helmet, for example, is not the way you ingratiate yourself to your fans and sponsors.

Anderson has had, by almost any standards, a very good season in 2009.  He’s won some races – and that’s more than a lot of other drivers can say – but he’s lost some, too.

Ask any racer, and those that are honest will admit that while drag racing may be addictive, winning makes it even more so.  Guys like Summit Racing Equipment Pro Stock driver Greg Anderson, who has a house full of NHRA national event trophies interspersed with the occasional POWERade Series championship gold, know what it’s like to win.  With winning comes losing.  It’s just the natural order of things.  But, it’s how you handle those losses that will ultimately determine your reputation.  Throwing your helmet, for example, is not the way you ingratiate yourself to your fans and sponsors.

Anderson has had, by almost any standards, a very good season in 2009.  He’s won some races – and that’s more than a lot of other drivers can say – but he’s lost some, too.

It’s crunch time in the Full Throttle Series championship battle, and the Countdown is winding down.  Greg Anderson will not win this year’s championship, not unless the sun, moon, stars and most of the planets line up just the right way between now, Halloween evening, and likely all Edwards will need to do is show up in Pomona to win.  He got close, but came into Vegas a significant 128 points behind Mike Edwards, and the de facto champion has opened up his lead even more after taking 12 bonus points during qualifying along with the Number 1 qualifying position. A quarter-final loss by Edwards gives hope, but not much.

A lesser man than Anderson might have shown signs of disgust at some point during the weekend, but he’s been the epitome of class, accepting his fate, if you will, like the champion he is.  And he hasn’t lost his sense of humor, either.  Trying to prod him just a little, we began our conversation by asking him how he liked the points chase this year.

“I got my ass kicked, so I hated it,” he said with a large grin on his face.  “Lightning would have to strike for us to win it, and that’s not reality,” he quickly added.  “(Edwards) is too good a racer to have it happen to him, and he’s going to be your champion.  The bottom line is, he deserves it.  He’s had the strongest car all year, and it’s certainly not a fluke that he’s gong to win it.  He’s been strong at every track we’ve been to.

“I’ve had a handful of strong races, but I’ve three handfuls of bad races.  The simple truth is I don’t deserve to be the champion this year, and he does.  I’m happier than hell that this year it looks like the strongest car is going to win the championship.  That’s what I like about it.  It didn’t really matter to me how the points system worked this year because the strongest car is going to win it.”

We wondered how the fans were interacting with Anderson, knowing he wasn’t likely to win the championship.  “It’s kind of funny,” he said.  “Some of the fans want to know why you suck so bad, why you’re runnin’ so bad, and I wish I had an answer for ‘em.  Most of the fans just don’t understand how you can be (on top) one day, and nowhere the next.  That’s what drag racing is, and that’s what happens to everybody out here.  You go through cycles.

“We’re still a great team, and we’ve got a great product here.  We still run fast, but right now there’s one guy that’s doing a better job than we are.  That drives us nuts, without a doubt, and we won’t sleep until we get it back the other way around, but right now we’re in that valley, but we need to get back to the peak.”

The question of sponsorship is always paramount with any racer, but people wonder how a sponsor reacts when they see a team they’ve invested in heavily failing to come home with a championship.  Do they understand how tough it is to win?  Do they realize how competitive Pro Stock really is?

“They seem to,” Anderson says.  “But you know that deep down they hope it wasn’t that way.  Heck, we wish it weren’t that way.  You’ve got to keep digging every day to get back to the top.

“The way the economy is right now, the way this whole sport is right now, it’s so tough to keep a sponsor happy and keep them doing what they’re doing because money isn’t discretionary to (the sponsors) any more.  It has to make sense to them to make an investment in racing, so without a doubt the better we perform, the more sense it makes to Summit for them to continue making that investment in us.  We don’t need to just be out here racing and hanging with the guys, we need to be winning.  (Summit) seems to understand where we are right now, but when it comes to the bottom line, you’re doggone right, it makes a difference when you’re winning races, and we’re not doing that right now.  We knew it would be more important to win races this year than ever before, but we’re just not doing it.”

Anderson is just one of many Pro Stock competitors who foresees possibly major changes in class participation next season.  “I’ve gotta believe we’re going to lose some people,” he says.  “I don’t know how we can’t.  I hate to say it, but I don’t know how every class out here isn’t going to lose a lot of people next year.  You can only hang in there and tough it out so long.  It takes a lot of money to run (these cars), and right now the money’s not there for a lot of people.  It’ll probably weed some people out, and I hate thinking about that.”

While the loss of General Motors support has been significant to everyone in Pro Stock, Anderson is upbeat about the future.  “I think GM will come back,” he says.  “I doubt if it’ll be in 2010.  It’ll be at least another year, but I definitely believe in my heart and mind that they’re going to come back.  I’ll hold out as long as I can for them to come back.  I’m still going to run Pontiacs, but I know when they do come back it’s obviously going to be with another brand (because the Pontiac brand will have been phased out before then – Ed.)  I really believe they will come back.”

The departure of General Motors severely impacted almost every Pro Stock program, certainly including the two car operation of Anderson and Jason Line that’s owned by Ken Black.  “The loss of GM hurt us tremendously,” Anderson admits.  “We had to make a lot of cutbacks on the team, and probably the product we put out there on the track isn’t as good as it might’ve been with that (GM) support.  We’re down four employees from last year, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg about what we had to do to keep going.  But, I can’t whine about that and feel badly, because I guarantee you that there are a whole lot of people out here who had to cut back further than we did.  We’re just doing the best we can with what we have.”

It’s always interesting to get a racer’s views on his own class, so we asked Anderson what he thought NHRA might be able to do to help make Pro Stock bigger and better.  “Well, obviously, it’s the same thing we’ve all been saying for a long time,” he said.  “We don’t think we get the recognition and the TV time and the build-up, or whatever you want to call it, from the sanctioning body that Top Fuel and Funny Car get.  I know that sounds like a broken record, and I’m sorry, but that’s the way we feel.  If you turn on your TV, or come out to the races and listen to the PA, we just don’t get the bang that the fuel classes get.

“We spend as much money, or more than they do.  We work as hard, or harder than they do.  We have what I think is a very, very interesting class.  It’s a competitive class, more competitive than the other two classes, and I don’t understand why we shouldn’t be treated equally with them.

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