Is Erica Enders the best driver in the history of NHRA Pro Stock racing? You can decide for yourself, but there is mounting evidence to support her case.
Before his untimely death in 2017, drag racing legend Bob Glidden publicly stated that Erica Enders was the best driver in the history of the Pro Stock class. Glidden was a 10-time world champion and an 85-time national event winner who wasn’t the least bit hesitant to freely offer an opinion. Glidden certainly knew a thing or two about Pro Stock, but was he correct? Is Erica indeed the best driver the Pro Stock class has ever seen?
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Better than Lee Shepherd? Better than Jeg Coughlin? Better than Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, Ronnie Sox, Warren Johnson, Greg Anderson, or even Glidden himself?
Today, as Enders celebrates her fifth NHRA world championship in the last nine years, it’s far easier to make the case that she could indeed be the best driver the Pro Stock class has ever seen. At the very least, it’s hard to argue that she doesn’t belong on the Mount Rushmore of Factory Hot Rod racing.
For her part, Enders isn’t one to accept praise or criticism very easily, so she’s not easily persuaded to jump headlong into the debate.
“I don’t even want to answer that question, but personally, it meant a lot to me when Bob said it,” said Enders. “Bob has 10 championships and he’s the guy we’re all chasing, so just to be mentioned in the same sentence as him is an honor. I’m still a fangirl at heart so it’s unreal to think of the position we’re in. This was not an easy road. I’ve had a lot of peaks and valleys but ultimately, I ended up with the right people and we’ve shared a lot of success. I might not be the best, but that’s always been my goal. I still learn something from every single pass. One thing I absolutely despise is the ‘me, me, me’ attitude, and I don’t want to come across that way, but I do believe our team is really good. You have to believe in yourself in order to be successful, no matter what you’re doing.”
Enders routinely works alongside her Elite crew performing routine maintenance between rounds, so she’s clearly not afraid to get her hands dirty. Still, it’s probably not fair to make a direct comparison between her and Pro Stock legends like Jenkins, W.J., or Shepherd, who were well-known for their innovation and mechanical ability. That’s a moot point, completely irrelevant to this discussion, since Elite team owner Richard Freeman pays Enders to win races, and she does that with alarming frequency—and regularly does it against some of the best competition the class has ever seen.
Since 2012, Enders has won 43 Pro Stock races, and she’s appeared in 74 final rounds while winning five championships. In a class where most races are decided by thousandths of a second, she has an almost robotic ability to get the clutch pedal out on time, make all four gear changes on time, and find the quickest way to get her Melling Camaro to the finish line.
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Driving a Pro Stock car has never been easy, and today’s 1,500-horsepower cars are more challenging than ever. They are fast, and they can be unpredictable. More important, when it comes to driving, precision is the key. Between launching, shifting, steering, and getting safely stopped, there’s a lot happening in six seconds, and every driver function must be performed with the utmost accuracy. Overheat the clutch on the burnout, miss a shift by 50 rpm, or drive the car out of the racing groove, and you’ve just wasted a run. Enders rarely does any of those things, which makes her extremely difficult to beat on race day.
“I wish that you could explain in two or three sentences just how challenging it is to drive one of these cars,” Enders said. “I get asked all the time about what it’s like to drive a Pro Stock car, and I try to find the right words to describe it, but you’ll never really know unless you’ve tried it. It’s so challenging that it almost becomes tedious. Every run is different. Every run is hard. People think that after you make a few hundred runs you’d get bored with it. It’s impossible to get bored with Pro Stock because it is so challenging. That’s exactly what I love about Pro Stock and the mental side of it. There is no margin for error.”
2022: A Season To Remember
Even if you don’t agree that Enders is the best Pro Stock driver of all time, she sure as heck was the class’s best driver in 2022, and it wasn’t even close. Short of pulling the golden ticket out of a Willy Wonka chocolate bar, there wasn’t much else that Enders and her Elite team could have done to make their season more successful than it was. Enders won 10 of 18 races and had a 55-8 record on race day, which was more than enough to claim a fifth NHRA Camping World championship. Her success is largely due to the disappointment of the 2021 season, where she watched longtime rival Greg Anderson capture his fifth title. Carrying the No. 2 on her car all year was a painful reminder of a lost opportunity.
“I feel like we win races before we leave the race shop,” she said. “You visualize what you want to happen, and I think we teed ourselves up for a super-successful season. The fashion in which we lost the championship last year made me realize not to take them for granted. We came out this year with a renewed sense of purpose, and I think it showed in our results.”
Ironically, the season that was mostly dominant began with a resounding thud after an embarrassing loss at the Gatornationals in Gainesville, Florida. In round one, Enders made the quickest run in the history of the class and set the record with 6.450, but didn’t win the round due to a massive starting-line holeshot by her teammate, Bo Butner. Clearly frustrated and embarrassed, Enders didn’t brood for long. Instead, she used the loss as a source of motivation and went on to win five of the next seven races. In drag racing, as in business and many other facets of life, success begets success, and once the Elite team got on a roll, there was virtually no stopping them.
“Gainesville was terrible; easily the worst loss of my career,” said Enders. “I was embarrassed and humiliated. I was ticked off but after it was over. It fueled my fire. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost. I compare it to golf. You might screw up a shot, but you can’t drag it to the next tee box. After that race, I had a long talk with myself, and I think that’s important. I was fortunate to grow up in a household where that was pounded into our brains. After Gainesville, we really didn’t skip a beat the rest of the season.”
There Are No Days Off
NHRA fans get to see a lot of Enders, since she’s one of drag racing’s most visible stars, but they rarely see what goes on behind the scenes. Yes, Enders is a hired driver, but her responsibilities at Elite Motorsports go well beyond just driving the race car. She’s often preoccupied with sponsor appearances, business meetings, and a wide variety of other tasks that might not normally be associated with a professional race car driver.
“I’m a full-time employee and that means when we’re not racing, I’m at the shop every day,” said Enders. “Richard [Freeman] has included me as a partner in some of his business ventures, and I also take care of all the logistics for our team as far as hotels, flights, and rental cars. We have 40 people who travel to almost every race, so it’s not a small job. We have a guy who handles our sponsorships, but I spend a lot of time working with him and the rest of our team. Actually, this is the first time in my 18-year career that our car is full. That speaks volumes about the success of Elite that we have to turn potential sponsors away. Driving is the biggest part of my job but it’s the smallest timewise. I call it controlled chaos.”
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At its core, the Elite team is a group that personifies the “work hard, play hard” mentality. At the same time, team boss Richard Freeman is known to have a low tolerance for B.S., which means Elite is not a place for the thin-skinned or the faint-of-heart. Enders has been able not only to survive but also thrive in that environment for nearly a decade, largely because she’s no shrinking violet.
“I think it all comes from Richard’s leadership,” she explains. “He doesn’t just want to win, he wants to stomp on their throats, and that mentality trickles down to the rest of the team. That all comes from years of experience. The success we have had means more as you get older, because you realize it’s not going to last forever. You also look back on the sacrifices you make, the money, the time, even marriages. Winning in this class means everything because you have to give up a lot to get there. I don’t want people to misunderstand me. I have a nice lifestyle. I live in a nice home. I drive a nice car. But for the last two decades, my life has been pretty much 24/7 Pro Stock. I’m certainly not complaining. I chose this life and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Just know it’s not an easy life by any means.”
That transitions nicely to perhaps the biggest question. How long can Enders continue to dominate on the NHRA Camping World tour? Perhaps more importantly, what will her life eventually be without Pro Stock? At 39, she certainly believes she’s in the prime of her career, and it’s not hard to imagine at least a few more championship opportunities. Then again, she has other goals in life that might become a priority.
“That is the million-dollar question. I’ve always wanted a family and a personal life, and I hope that’s still in the cards for me,” Enders said. “Someday, I’d like to move home [to Texas] and have a husband and a family. That might mean my time in Pro Stock is shorter than I want it to be. The problem is, I don’t know what feeling will replace throwing the chutes at 210 mph, pushing the clutch in, and seeing the win light in my lane. It’s definitely scary, but I do know that no matter what comes at me, I’ll attack it the same way I’ve approached Pro Stock. I feel like racing has given me the tools I need to succeed, and I don’t know how to give less than 110 percent.”
Whenever Enders does finally hang up her helmet and firesuit, she can rest comfortably knowing that she’s one of the best to ever drive a Pro Stock car.
“Honestly, I’ll let other people make those comparisons,” she says. “My goal was always to just be the best driver that I can be, not the best female driver, or better than this guy or that guy. I just wanted to know I’ve done all I can do to make my team successful. I think back to when I started racing Jr. Dragsters when I was 8. I had a big dream to race as a pro, and it happened. For that, I’ll always be grateful.”
Watch! Supercharging a Fifth-Gen Chevy Camaro
All the way back in episode 2 ofHOT ROD Garage, Mike Finnegan blows up the stock clutch in a borrowed 2010 Camaro SS at the dragstrip after installing an SLP supercharger kit and a pair of drag radials. The blower pushed the power output from 420 to 575 horsepower and, except for a couple extra holes in the valance, it bolted-right onto the stock LS2 engine. Sign up for a free trial to MotorTrend+ today and start watching every episode ofHOT ROD Garage, plus much more!
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