Dallas Glenn may be as locked in as ever heading into the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series’ six-race Countdown to the Championship.
While Glenn heads to Maple Grove (Pa.) Raceway this weekend as the points leader, he and his KB Titan Racing team know holding the top spot won’t be an easy task.
During Tuesday’s media conference, Glenn joined the Zoom session from a drag strip, where he and his team were testing.
Along with testing and fine-tuning, Glenn, who led the Pro Stock standings heading into last year’s Countdown but fell to sixth by season’s end, believes he and the team have zeroed in on issues that hindered them from a potential title.
“I kind of more look at it like, we all know what we need to do,” Glenn began. “Obviously there are some technical details that we’re looking at on what we can improve on, there’s also horsepower. But it’s also moving forward.
“Anytime that you are static in this class, you’re going backward, basically. It’s constantly evolving, constantly moving forward.
“We kind of know what we need to do. I know that there were some mistakes on my part during the Countdown,” Glenn continued. “You look at Reading (Maple Grove) last year, I was .001 red (light) first round. That’s not something that you can do at the very first race of the Countdown.
“I did a good job driving to get to the final round of the next race. Then you go to St. Louis, the car really wasn’t there, even though it may not have been my driving.
“We had a couple other races where we just had some small parts failures. Just little stuff plague us.”
With plenty of lessons learned from last year, Glenn’s attention turns to the competition level of his Pro Stock counterparts.
Glenn has a 25-point cushion over perhaps the categories’ most lethal driver of late, Aaron Stanfield.
Stanfield and Elite Motorsports have tallied an impressive four victories, including the historic U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park two weeks ago.
“You can’t deny Aaron Stanfield in the last few races,” Glenn said. “He’s got four wins on the season. He’s basically been in about every final round of the last six races, with the exception of I think maybe one. You definitely have to look at him as a threat. He’s moving up in the ranks very, very quickly.”
Behind Stanfield in the Countdown standings is Glenn’s teammate Greg Anderson (-35), whose five titles and 105 career wins can’t be ignored. Glenn stressed the difficulty of facing Anderson, regardless of his reaction time in any given round.
“Greg Anderson, you look how fast that car’s gone… when that car’s performing well, it doesn’t even matter how great his light is or not, he’s gonna be tough to beat,” Glenn said.
The likes of six-time champions Erica Enders and Jeg Coughlin Jr., and the rest of the Countdown field present a challenge that Glenn admitted he can’t take for granted.
“Pretty much, the way the class is right now, anybody in the top 16, anybody who’s qualified, is gonna be tough,” Glenn said. “You can’t go up there, try and think that you’re gonna have any easy rounds right now.”
As he seeks first championship in Pro Stock competition, Glenn is confident he and his team have made the right adjustments.
“We know what needs to be done and we’re just gonna try and go up there and try to be as aggressive as possible and always try to look forward to the next one,” Glenn said.
“Drag racing’s a very humbling sport. You can go from hero to zero in a heartbeat.”