Baytown: Greg Anderson Saturday summary

Greg Anderson No. 2 at Houston

BAYTOWN, Texas (April 1, 2006) -- Greg Anderson placed the KB Racing LLC, Summit Racing Equipment Pro Stock Pontiac GTO in the No. 2 spot on the final qualifying ladder as qualifying ended for this weekend's 19th annual NHRA O'Reilly Auto Parts Nationals at Houston Raceway Park.

On Friday, Anderson didn't get off to the start he wanted. With the temperatures rising and the humidity high, the three-time Pro Stock champ could only muster a 6.736-second pass in the opening session. Then with cool evening temperatures and the humidity near 100 percent, he suffered tire shake that prevented any improvement, running a 6.757 and ending the first day of qualifying in the No. 8 spot.

On what many teams considered a less than perfect track, Anderson made up some ground in Saturday's first qualifying sessions running a 6.706-second pass at 206.16 mph. It was the low elapsed time of that session. Anderson also had the low elapsed time of Saturday's final qualifying session running an elapsed time of 6.682 seconds, climbing to the second position.

"You can't complain when you've got both Summit Pontiac one and two," said Anderson immediate following the final qualifying session. "I've been No. 1 three times, now it's Jason's turn. Qualifying is over and we've got the $3,000 King Demon money in the bank. Now we've got to regroup and make these cars fast for tomorrow. We're making decent runs now; tomorrow we've got to make perfect runs."

Anderson squares off against No. 15 qualifier Greg Stanfield in the first round of eliminations. It was just one race ago the Anderson was turned back by Stanfield's challenge and he wants to turn that outcome around tomorrow.

-kbm