DRO: Do you see Pro Stock going the way of the nitro classes, with more multi-car teams competing? You've got the two-car team now, but do you eventually plan a three or four-car team?

Anderson: Yes I do, I do see that. But it's not on the table yet, it's not a plan yet. We're still growing, we're still trying to get to where we want to be. We're not where we want to be yet and we don't have all the things we need to do the job properly. We don't have enough equipment, we don't have enough people, and we don't have enough budget. We don't have enough of anything yet to do that. Will we someday have that? Hopefully it will happen. I think the bigger you can expand your team properly with the proper people and the proper budget, the better you can be. But if you do it too soon, you're not prepared budget wise, you're not prepared shop wise or people wise, then it's going to come back to haunt you. It's a slow progression and someday I see that coming, but not in the near future. We're barely able to run a two-car team properly.

It's hard to find the right people that will all get along and fit together. It's hard and the more you get, the harder it is to get enough good people.

DRO: You have a strong mechanical background, so do you get more satisfaction from preparing the car or driving it?

Anderson: I'm getting a lot of satisfaction out of the motor end of it, but at the same time there's nothing that compares to when you do a decent job of driving and you win the race because you drove well. That's the last part that meets the finish line, the last piece of the puzzle and the first part to get congratulations or if you do a bad job, the blame. It's the end of the rope, the bottom line, whatever you want to call it.

DRO: How do you feel about the way NHRA promotes drag racing?

Anderson: I don't know that I have the answer for that except I don't think that they promote Pro Stock enough. It's hard for us to get equal TV time with the fuel classes. You see a lot of times when you go up to run Pro Stock after they get done running fuel, a lot of
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people walk out of the grandstand. That hurts your feelings. You wonder why that's happening. We're a professional class too, and I think we're more exciting than fuel cars, but apparently lot of people don't think that way. What do we do to change that? Is it simply because NHRA doesn't promote us enough? Probably not. There are probably things that need to be changed in the class.

The one thing I know and I really feel deep down that would help the class is for the cars to go faster. I honestly believe that. Obviously, you're not going to go as fast as a fuel class. So does it matter that we run 205 instead of 300? Is 250 going to be any better? Is 230 going to be any better than 205? Maybe it won't make any difference at all. I don't know what it's going to take. I don't know what's going to work, but that's one thing I can think of.

DRO: How do you feel about the Pro Mod guys being out there as a faster doorslammer class?

Anderson: I don't think you'll find any Pro Stock guy that's comfortable with it because they (NHRA) already know we've got a problem with this class. We've got an identity problem and we feel that the reason NHRA brings in Pro Mod is that they like something about them better. It threatens us and I'm not going to sit here and say I like it, but it threatens our class. Am I wrong to think that probably we just need to make our class better?

The bottom line why we don't really like it is we know for a fact that the most hands-on, hardcore technology, and refined parts are in Pro Stock cars. They are not in Pro Mods or fuel cars. We spend hour after hour after hour on every piston, every rod that goes in these motors hand fitting them to the thousandths. They don't do that in Pro Mod or in the fuel classes. They just pop another set of pistons in her, pop another set of rods in her, pour more nitro in her, more alcohol, or whatever they run. That doesn't happen in our class and that's why we like it so much. It takes so much thought, so much time, so much effort. Everything has got to be perfect to make these things run like they run. I don't see that in the other classes and that's why we're threatened by them.









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