Drag Illustrated Issue 118, February 2017 | Page 26

Dirt Return to familiar Chevrolet equipment has Erica Enders- Stevens excited for 2017 By Brandon W. Mudd O ver the course of the two NHRA Mello Yello Series seasons spanning 2014-2015, Erica Enders- Stevens was on top of the Pro Stock world. The Texan earned 15 Wallys, 12 top quali- fiers, two K&N Challenge wins, and, oh yeah, two NHRA Pro Stock titles. Last year? Not so much. In a season seeing the class move to electronic fuel injection and her Elite Motorsports team change engine programs, the best finish Enders- Stevens achieved was a trifecta of semi-finals appearances. Stick-and-ball sports regularly see the blame game during and after that kind of year. Throughout it all, though, Erica was the model of poise and grace, the epitome of which was shown at Sonoma when her Elite Motorsports machine refused to go to the line during the first round of eliminations. Her response? An interview the minute s he got out of the driver’s seat, showing the world how a champion acts in the low mo- ments of a career. While it may not have gone exactly the way she and team owner Richard Freeman planned it, Enders-Stevens knew 2016 was going to be a hard year. “You know, it was definitely a challeng- ing year,” she said. “We knew that it was going to be, heading into it. Any time that you start an engine development program from scratch…it takes time to do that stuff, you know? “People from the outside, looking in, don’t nec- essarily understand that it doesn’t happen at the drop of a hat. It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of resources. Not just money, but a lot of sacrifice. So, we did the best that we could.” Even with shorter fields than NHRA has seen in a while, winning still isn’t easy. Last year, Ja- son Line and Greg Anderson wore out the Pro Stock field, with Line eventually earning his third class title and Anderson finishing a close second. Enders-Stevens knows how that kind of domination feels after a nine-win season the year before, but she also knows those wins can dry up at any time. “We’re a championship-caliber team and to go out there and know that unless our competitor went red or hit the wall, that we had pretty much zero chance of winning, so it’s a different mind- set, and it wasn’t something that we were used to,” she said. “Having said that, it didn’t change the way that we race; it didn’t change our confidence level, and it didn’t change our people. “I think that it built character, if anything and, you know, people can say, ‘Oh, you get used to winning’ and blah blah blah. Well, you never get used to winning, and every time I’m in the win- ner’s circle, I, like, soak it up, and I take a million pictures because they’re so few and far between.” It’s no longer 2016. Those days and those expe- riences are in the past. For Erica, in 2017, there is the expectation of returning to the winning ways that brought two championship trophies to Elite Motorsports. “It was nice to have the feeling that we had ‘14 and ’15,” she said, “any time you roll on the prop- erty that you have as good a chance as anybody to win the race and we did not have that chance in 2016. So, to have that opportunity back is awesome, you know? It’s .005 away from making it to our first final round in like sixteen months or something crazy, and, you know, it’s just the beginning for this new program for us, and I think the sky is the limit. “I’m very excited; I’m very optimistic about 2017.” DI DI DI DI DI DI DI 26 | D r a g I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com DI DI DI Issue 118 Optimism Renewed