INDIANAPOLIS — Greg Anderson won his 100th career NHRA race, defeating Dallas Glenn in the Pro Stock finals of the U.S. Nationals on Monday.
Anderson reached 208.07 mph in his 6.587-second winning run. Seven of his victories have come at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.
“I don’t know if I can explain how meaningful this is,” Anderson said. “It’s incredible and this (100th) win was meant to happen here. Indy means everything to me, and I’ve said that my whole career. Nothing compares to this place and to get my 100th win here, I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more.”
Veteran Ron Capps, the defending world champion in Funny Car, won for the 71st time in his career and first in 27 appearances at Indy with a run of 3.911 seconds at 327.98 mph to defeat points leader Robert Hight in the final round.
“We’ve come close to this, and we’ve had great race cars, but the car today was just so consistent,” Capps said. “It’s an emotional place to come to and we accomplished all the goals we had on the table. Robert is as good as it gets, and he’s raised the bar for everybody. This place has such history and great moments, and it’s just been an unbelievable year.”
GALLERY: NHRA U.S. Nationals
Antron Brown (Top Fuel) and Matt Smith (Pro Stock Motorcycle) also won at NHRA's final regular-season event, the 16th of 22 races overall.
Brown picked up his second win in three races and the 70th in his career with a run of 3.706 seconds at 321.66 mph in his dragster to knock off points leader Brittany Force in the final round. The final margin of victory was less than .01 seconds.
It's his fourth win at the U.S. Nationals, but his first as a team owner.
"This is beyond words. I'm trying to keep it together right now. This is an emotional moment, because this is a big, big race," Brown told 13News after the race. "But man, it's just all that hard work and what we came through in the offseason putting this whole thing together. And from Brian, Mark, our whole team, my family."
Smith, the defending world champ, won for the first time in Indy since 2006 with a run of 6.872 seconds at 195.99 mph on his Suzuki in the final round.
"We got a really fast Suzuki, and we got a really fast Buell. We came here with a new motor in the Suzuki and I just wasn't happy the way it ran the first pass. And I just decided, instead of quit messing around with everybody and just pull out my other one that I knew would go fast and, you know, we qualified second with it and ultimately we won the race with it," Smith said.