Climb Back to Top Begins in St. Louis for PX’s Hossler

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Alex Hossler is excited about the potential opportunities that await at his hometown track in one week.The Pro Extreme driver is also fully aware of the challenges that come with that.Hossler will have plenty of friends and family at the track, which will make a double-race weekend potentially even more draining.At the same time, Hossler knows that getting a pair of wins would make it all worth it.“Anytime you can race in front of your friends and family at your home track, it’s exciting,” Hossler said. “There’s extra pressure because you always want to do good, but it’s nice to have a 3-hour trip instead of a 20-hour trip.“It’s the race we look forward to most and probably put the most pressure on ourselves because of that. You’ve got two days of that, so it’s double the pressure, but hopefully it will be double the fun.”Fun wasn’t the operative word last weekend in Houston, where Hossler and his team struggled to put anything together. He lost in the first round of both races on that double weekend, falling to Tommy D’Aprile by a mere seven feet on Friday before a red-light loss the next day.It cost him the points lead in Pro Extreme, but Hossler joked he hoped he got all of his “screw-ups” out of the way before coming to St. Louis, where he hopes this two-race weekend goes better.At Gateway International Raceway, the ADRL will finish the Hardee’s Independence Drags IV on Friday and will complete the Hardee’s Gateway Drags III the next day.Hossler didn’t exactly fall off the points cliff - he remains in third behind Joshua Hernandez and Frankie Taylor - and he’s not going to complain if he remains in his current position heading into the World Finals VI in Dallas in October.“Are we a contender? Yes. Do I think we’re going to be in the points lead going into the Battle for the Belts? I don’t know,” Hossler said. “If we can be in the top four, that’s a realistic goal for us.”Hossler won in Dallas last October, but has managed to stay under the radar while competing with the elite in the class.That says plenty for the work being put in by his team and Chris Duncan Race Cars, but also for the consistency Hossler has maintained throughout the year.“We’re not as flashy as some of these teams, we don’t run the low numbers and we’re probably not going to be low E.T., but we’ve gained points with consistency,” Hossler said. “Obviously, the torque converter is a big help with that and we just try to go as many rounds as we can.”

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