INDIANAPOLIS, IN. (September 4th, 2016) After virtually a month of waiting, the delayed Pro Stock final from the Protect the Harvest Northwest Nationals was finally run. It was an Elite Motorsports final with Vincent Nobile and Aaron Strong. The team won back to back world championships in Pro Stock in 2014 and 2015, but has struggled to find success in the 2016 season until recently. Vincent Nobile so far has two number one qualifiers to his name as well as a win from the Brainerd event. However it was his teammate, Aaron Strong, who picked up his first ever Wally. Strong, who moved up from the sportsman ranks to Pro Stock last year, has found the support he’s received in the last 24 hours to be “overwhelming”.
“All the support— it’s been insane. More than insane; we’re in the winners circle last night and Ron Capps rolls up to run his car and he comes running over and gives me a hug. He was the Seattle winner and was like ‘lets take a picture with the wally!’ Greg Anderson came over this morning, all the fans, everybody’s been so supportive of us its been very overwhelming,” Strong said.
The Seattle final was a much anticipated event after it was rained out in early August. Strong was unable to make the race in Brainerd and teammate Vincent Nobile elected to run the final during the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals so that Strong didn’t have to miss his first final round. “We weren’t upset we had to wait to win the final because we got to go to Indy and we’ve never run Indy before. It’s been on the bucket list, I’ve always wanted to do it but never did. It was a great opportunity to come here and finish the Seattle race.”
Strong, a Seattle native is currently running select events, but with this weekend’s success, sees more events in his future. “It was a fifty-fifty shot of us coming here if we hadn’t made the final. If we just did good we would’ve come [here]. But it was just about money, we’re not a big funded team, a lot of it’s out of our pocket. We’ve got some great sponsors but it’s still very expensive to run these things,” Strong stated. “We were always planning on running Vegas and Pomona because we’re from the west coast — Seattle, Washington. But now that we’re back here in Indiana, we won the race and we won the extra prize money we’re gonna leave our rig back here so we’re going to run St. Louis and Dallas now so that really helps out our little team a lot to go to more races.”
