Spirit of Mazda: Eric Anderson

By: MazdaMotorsports.com | December 2, 2018 12:39 AM Continually striving for excellence in car preparation, he’s happy to let others take the gloryEric Anderson has built one of the best Super Street Modified cars in the country, and certainly the fastest SSM Miata. That car once again won an SSM national championship at the 2018 Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships. But Anderson was driving it in X Prepared, where he scored a trophy and came darn close to winning, while two other drivers drove it in SSM. There, Randall Wilcox took his second national championship in the class driving Anderson’s Miata.“He gave up his seat in SSM to two other people,” explains Wilcox. “He gave me and Jason Collet our best opportunity to win SSM while he sacrificed himself and went and drove in XP so his car would have the best opportunity to win SSM. And while he was at it, he managed to podium in XP and almost sneak away with a win.”While Anderson is always working on improving his driving through data, video and discussing technique with other drivers, it’s the car building and preparation where he excels. Not that he’s not a good autocrosser – trophies from the Solo Nationals prove he’s more than proficient behind the wheel – but rather he’s more than happy to let others take the spotlight.“He’s always looking for input from people he thinks are better drivers than him, and he takes the input well. I know he doesn’t get the credit he deserves as a driver, because he’s usually beaten by a co-driver. The reason for that is he only puts people in the car that he thinks are capable of winning a national championship,” says Wilcox.That speaks both to Anderson’s continuous Kaizen and his challenger spirit. Compared to some, Anderson is relatively new to the autocross game, having been at it for about eight years. But he set a nearly impossible goal right off the bat.