The SummitRacing.com Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway over this past weekend featured the K&N Horsepower Challenge in Pro Stock. A race within a race, the K&N Horsepower Challenge is contested during qualifying between the top seven qualifiers from the previous year, and one racer who gets in on popular vote to make it an even eight competitors.
Enders-Stevens won the K&N Horsepower Challenge on Saturday by beating Vincent Nobile. The two would meet again in the Pro Stock final on Sunday. Using CFE components in her Elite Motorsports powerplant fed by an Aeromotive fuel system, Enders-Stevens ran consistent 6.60s throughout the weekend to score the impressive double.
Both Nobile and Enders-Stevens had tough roads to travel to get to the final, and Enders-Stevens was even sick, needing an IV on Sunday to get her through the day. Nobile, who is known for cutting a light, and Enders-Stevens both relied on stout reaction times on Sunday to get through eliminations. Enders-Stevens used a poor attempt at a redlight, a .001 reaction time, to get past Greg Anderson in the semi-final round, while Nobile made it past Allen Johnson, when Johnson suffered tire shake at the hit and was out of it by the sixty-foot mark.
In the final against Nobile, Enders-Stevens didn’t push the tree as hard as she did against Anderson, but her .024 light showed she was ready to go. Nobile wasn’t too far behind with his own .040 reaction time. The two were even as they went down the track, but thanks to her slight edge at the tree she was able to stay out front. Both Enders-Stevens and Nobile ran identical 6.674-seond elapsed time at 207 mph, and the margin of victory was a mere five-feet.
The double-up is Enders-Stevens second in a row at The Strip. She won the 2014 K&N Horsepower Challenge, as well.
Photos courtesy NHRA/National Dragster