SNOHOMISH, Wash. — She’s nice. Really, she is.
But Erica Enders, the five-time and reigning NHRA Pro Stock champion, promised at the start of the 2022 season — when she earned the first of 10 victories — that her rivals would see “no more nice Erica.”
She was keenly disappointed in relinquishing her crown to longtime rival and 101-time winner Greg Anderson, whom she defeated 10 years before, in 2012, for the first of her 39 victories.
And as she prepares for an even more focused run at a sixth Pro Stock title and an additional challenge as a rookie Mountain Motor Pro Stock competitor, Enders claims she still means it. She said she wouldn’t mind a new catch-phrase but that she still lives by the 2022 mantra.
“It’s funny, because sometimes you say things in an interview, and they roll off your tongue and nobody says a word. And then sometimes you say things and they stick. And that is one thing that stuck this (past) entire year. But I still feel that way,” she said. “I still feel like it’s an accurate statement.
“So, no, there’s ‘no more nice Erica,’” she said. “I’m going to come out here and I’m going to try to make every moment count — not that I hadn’t before. But I’m at a point in my career I’m not young anymore, but I’m not old. But you never know when it’s going to be your last and you got to make the best of it. You got to make the moments count.”
In 2021, Enders dropped a semifinal match-up to Anderson that handed him his fifth championship on the final day of the season. And that, she said, had a “mad fire lit” under her.
“I wanted to come back and be a better driver, do a better job. My guys wanted to outrun Greg because we got stomped in 2021, performance-wise, and it still came down to the wire,” Enders explained. “So having a little bit of a performance advantage this year and then doing a decent job behind the wheel, we were able to win 10 races. I feel like the mindset definitely worked to our advantage, and I plan to have the same mindset in 2023.”
Enders will be carrying it over to the Mountain Motor Pro Stock class, as well. Her Elite Motorsports team owner, Richard Freeman, competed in that class years ago and said he wanted “to work with NHRA to try to grow that category. We’re going to work on that Ford program and see if we can make something out of it. We have a strong belief that it could be something great with the team of people we have in place. With this acquisition, we’ve got door-car racing covered.”
So the two of them will add the 800-cubic-inch-powered cars to their NHRA racing calendar.
And Enders said, “We’re going to take the same approach that we do in 500-inch Pro Stock racing. But we’re also going to be the newbies. I haven’t driven that stuff. We haven’t run that stuff before. I’m sure there’ll be some sort of a learning curve, and we’ll go out and test and practice and make sure we’re good before we go. But it’ll be a cool addition and just another door car that I can put on my list of things we’ve done.”
Enders had a stint a few years ago in the Pro Mod category.
“Finicky or crazy, unpredictable. I think we can find a plethora of words to describe Pro Mod,” she said. And that’s not the case with Mountain Motor Pro Stock cars, which are more like what she’s used to. These will be more manageable.
She’ll be a natural, if her Pro Stock performance level is any indication.
Enders won 10 times in 19 races last year and made the quickest pass in Pro Stock history (6.450 seconds in the quarter-mile). With three races remaining, Anderson paid her a passing-the-torch sort of compliment — or at the least a gesture of respect she has earned with her perseverance and progress through the years.
Her driving has improved exponentially since the seven winless years that beset the beginning of her career. She has matured on and off the drag strip and learned to rise to the occasion. And she has had the luxury, finally, of landing with a team that is exceptionally supportive of her.
“I know it sounds cliché, but the most important part of the puzzle is to have a group that operates as one and that you can trust, not just on making the race car safe for you, but trusting them with everything,” Enders said. “Whether it be something that you tell them, executing a job perfectly, having your back when somebody’s doing something as stupid as running their mouth, or they’re not trying to sneak your ride from underneath you. There are no ulterior motives. There’s just a good group of men. I didn’t always have that, but I have it now. I feel like that was the most challenging part was to weed through all of the crap to get to the cream.”
Considered a veteran of the class, Enders said, “Look at some of these younger drivers that come in and write a check and they think that they’re just going to go out and win the championship their first year at five races and qualifying on the pole and all these goals that they set. Like, hang on just a second,” she said. “First, have a little bit of respect for the class and how challenging it is on the business side of it and then get in the car, have a team that works well together, get up and down the road and have some success on the race track.
“There are a lot of pieces of the puzzle and some of the newer people don’t understand that because they didn’t have to go through it and that’s not their fault. I think it’s great that they got to short-cut that,” she said. “But at the same time, those experiences for me made me today — not just the driver that I am but dealing with the business side and running the operations.”
But when she’s buckled into her race car, that door slams and she’s watching the Christmas Tree, all her opponents need to know is that for the next six-and-a-half seconds or so, they’re going to see “no more nice Erica.”
This story appeared in the Jan. 18 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
