Nobody was supposed to tell Greg Anderson that Kyle Larson won the NASCAR Cup Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway today, but when the six-time Pro Stock world champion found out that his HendrickCars.com counterpart had claimed the victory on the circle track, he didn’t take the pressure in a negative way. He used it as fuel to power through mighty and sometimes ridiculous challenges and make it a double for Mr. H and the esteemed group with a straight-line win of his own.
Driving the HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro out of the KB Titan Racing stable, Anderson locked down career win No. 107 on one of the weirdest days he’s experienced in racing. After seeing Anderson soar past a tire-chattering Fernando Cuadra Jr. in the first round with a 6.555-second pass at 209.49 mph, round two had the Pro Stock fans on the edge of their seats. Eric Latino fired his GESi Camaro and pulled through the waterbox for their match, but Anderson’s car emitted a loud pop as he attempted to fire and then sat idle. The KB Titan Racing crew swarmed his strangely silent hot rod and quickly assessed the situation. Dzus tools were quickly fished from pockets as the team worked feverishly to remove the front end and get to the root of the problem, and moments ticked painfully by.
Soon, the HendrickCars.com Chevrolet roared back to life with a thrumming and clearly too-high idle, but experienced racer Anderson finessed his race car through the burnout and managed to stage the clearly displeased and ready-to-bolt Chevy. The world champ launched first next to Latino, .069 to .102, and miraculously mustered a 6.616, 209.17 to defeat a 6.594, 209.17 on a holeshot.
“When my car backfired trying to start it, it blew the rubber out of the manifold, and the thing was trying to idle at 9,000 rpm,” explained Anderson. “I had no chance to win, but my great crew ripped the front end off quick, and they got in there and stuffed some of the rubber back in the manifold and got it to idle down to about 4,000 or 5,000 rpm. I was like, ‘Get out of the way; I’m staging this racecar.’ We got her staged, and somehow, we got that round win.”
The semifinals brought Anderson together with Aaron Stanfield, one of the drivers with whom he was locked in battle for the championship at the end of the 2024 season. Knowing that Stanfield can and will throw down a killer reaction time in any given round, Anderson was at the top of his game and offered up a brilliant .018-second reaction time to his opponent’s .031, and it only went downhill from there for the guy in the other lane as Anderson wheeled smoothly ahead for a 6.586, 209.79 triumph over a traction-troubled 16.603. The win light came with a ticket to the 184th final round of his career.
On the other side of the ladder, Anderson’s most friendly nemesis, Dallas Glenn, was taking care of business for KB Titan Racing as he picked off David Cuadra, Greg Stanfield, and Matt Hartford. Glenn and Anderson were meeting in the final round for the second time in the two races so far contested this season, and they raced one another for the championship in the final round of 2024 as well, making this their third consecutive final.
But the oddities of the day weren’t done, and in the most unfathomable final round, Glenn surged forward and illuminated the red-light before the tree even began to drop. Anderson launched hard and fast but immediately his car quit, and he coasted to a stop on the dragstrip – victorious, if not a bit deflated.
“I’m still trying to figure out how the heck I won,” said the mystified driver, holding the 107th Pro Stock trophy of his career and relishing having control of the points lead once again. “You go up there, and you’re racing Dallas Glenn in the final. We locked horns a couple weeks ago in Gainesville, and I told my team going up there, look, you’re going to have to do something special with my race car, because I know the kid is going to be .00 or teen (reaction time) at the worst. I got on my crew chiefs, and I told them to step on the car. They stepped on the car and it shook the tires.
“We both pretty much staged at the same time, which usually screws you up, and I saw some sort of flash of light. I let the clutch out, and I red-lighted, but it was Dallas’s red-light that I saw. My car made it about a foot then it shut off. I thought, ‘Now I have to sit in front of the grandstands’ and you want to sink underneath the seat because you just red-lighted and threw the race away.”
Reacting to Glenn’s false start, Anderson did red-light by -.041, but by NHRA rules, the first person to light it red is disqualified. Even without reaching the finish line, Anderson had the race in the bag.
“It was a great day,” said Anderson. “When one of my guys slipped up and told me that Kyle Larson had won, the pressure was on. I had to win, and we won. We won, and Mr. Hendrick had a great day. We feel fantastic with the start we’ve had to the season, and I’m very proud of this team. I’m not under any grand illusions; I’ve been on the other side and I know what this does to the competition. It makes you angry. It makes you work harder. You find a way to recover. We’ve got a long way to go on the season, but this is a great start. I’m proud of that, proud of the work that we put in over the winter, and proud of the way that this race team is executing right now. It isn’t going to last forever, but we’re going to make hay while we can.”
The next event on the 2025 Mission Foods Drag Racing Series schedule will be the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip, March 27-30.
This story was originally published on March 24, 2025. 
