ENDERS-STEVENS DEFEATS CONNOLLY TO WIN K&N HORSEPOWER CHALLENGE


(Tim Marshall photo)

Erica Enders-Stevens raced to victory in the K&N Horsepower Challenge, closing out an action-packed Saturday.
  
Enders-Stevens entered the K&N Horsepower Challenge field as an alternate for the retired Mike Edwards but took full advantage and beat fan-vote winner Dave Connolly in the final with a performance of 6.646 seconds at 208.39 mph to pocket a $50,000 paycheck. The No. 3 seed was runner-up to Allen Johnson at last season’s bonus event, but she piloted her Elite Motorsports Chevy Camaro to her first win in the K&N Horsepower Challenge, becoming the first female winner of the special bonus race.

“We've had a great hot rod all year and it really came together for us two weeks ago in Gainesville,” said Enders-Stevens. “We set the national record but lost in the final round on a holeshot, so it was great to give something back to my guys.”

The final with Connolly pitted Enders-Stevens against her former crew chief, a matchup that both wanted to take for bragging rights. The Houston native brushed it off, mentioning that it was her job to focus only on her lane and run.

“Part of being a professional athlete is having to put personal things aside for business, and it is a true challenge and something I work hard on,” she said. “It's about me getting up on the wheel and the guys putting a great race car underneath me to get from Point A to Point B.”

"We were trying not to be too conservative because that's bitten us before, but we just got overly aggressive and didn't move two feet," said Connolly, the 2005 winner of the shootout-style competition for the top performing cars in the category. "But that's part of racing. It was definitely a good day for myself and for Shane to have even gotten by first round. At that point, we knew we were sending a Gray Motorsports Camaro to the final.

"Obviously, I would have liked to have represented our team a little better and close the deal, but we made our first final of the year. This was a bonus race, so we aren't going to let it hurt us – we're going to go back and look at our notes from qualifying, learn, and move on."


Jimmy Alund has been driving the second Summit car while Greg Anderson recuperates from heart surgery. Anderson was at Las Vegas, looking pretty good, to support his teammates.

On the other side of the ladder, Summit Racing teammate Jimmy Alund was making the most of his Sunday in the Nevada desert by earning the first NHRA round win of his career with a defeat of Vincent Nobile in the opening act and then, stunningly, putting Jeg Coughlin on the trailer on a holeshot in the quarterfinals. The respective successes of the Team Summit drivers manifested a meeting in the semifinals, where both were exceptionally quick at the starting line and stayed glued together down the track in a show of fierce yet friendly competition.

Line got the win with a .006-second reaction time to Alund's .019 paired with a 6.645, 207.98 to 6.647, 208.10.

"I think the best part of my day was when Jimmy beat Coughlin in the second round," said Line of his teammate's defeat of the rival mail order parts catalog campaigner. "We might as well have won the race – that was big for us. Huge. Jimmy took care of business for Team Summit, and we were all very happy about that."