Cruz Pedregon Nostalgia Trans Am Funny Car
Take the crew chiefs out of the equation, let the drivers do their tuning, he says. That would be his fantasy race.
Pedregon showcased his tuning talents by pushing his Funny Car to the top spot of Funny Car qualifying at the NHRA O'Reilly Nationals at zMax Dragway in Concord, NC. Spewing flames as he crossed the finish line, the two-time NHRA champion reeled off a 4.078 elapsed time at 303.57 miles per hour, besting John Force's 4.081 single car pass.
If his run holds, it will be his first top qualifying spot of 2010 and the 39th of his career. Thus far Pedregon has qualified in the top five for seven of the last eight events.
Take the crew chiefs out of the equation, let the drivers do their tuning, he says. That would be his fantasy race.
Pedregon showcased his tuning talents by pushing his Funny Car to the top spot of Funny Car qualifying at the NHRA O'Reilly Nationals at zMax Dragway in Concord, NC. Spewing flames as he crossed the finish line, the two-time NHRA champion reeled off a 4.078 elapsed time at 303.57 miles per hour, besting John Force's 4.081 single car pass.
If his run holds, it will be his first top qualifying spot of 2010 and the 39th of his career. Thus far Pedregon has qualified in the top five for seven of the last eight events.
"There's no hero crew chiefs over here, I pretty much make all of the calls on my set up," Pedregon explained. "I admire Tim Wilkerson more than I ever have in my entire career. What that guy does [in tuning and driving his car] is very difficult."
Both Pedregon's tuning and driving instincts led him to believe he was in for a treat before this weekend even began.
"This track is all concrete and coming in, we knew it was going to be a really good track," said Pedregon. "Obviously we knew the temperature was going to factor into everything. We had an odd scenario coming in, we blew up both times. The difference between the two is that on the evening run, it blew up at the finish line."
Pedregon said the cause of both engine failures was with something a crew member was doing wrong.
"It was a good run and I hope it sticks, tomorrow is going to be warmer," said Pedregon. "It's a real honor to be here. I know we aren't in the Countdown but I told Dave Reiff of ESPN earlier today that our strategy was to pretend we are in the Countdown. Our car doesn't know any better."
The Snap-on Tools Toyota Pedregon is running this weekend is different from the car he ran the last time the NHRA was at zMax Dragway for the 4-Wide Nationals. While the team struggled much of the first quarter of the season, Pedregon believes the NHRA Midwest Nationals in St. Louis, Mo., was the turning point for his program.
"We got our act together. We started the season trying to run our 2008 combination. All winter long I wondered why we were changing the car, we only won the championship with it. Even though my crew chief Rahn Tobler left, we still dedicated ourselves to running the tune-up 100-percent. After four races, we realized so much had changed about these cars we would take a different path.
"We went to what we had developed in 2009, which was a workable combination. Tony (his brother) had run the combination with workable success. We stuck with the combination and said we were going to work it out, and stay with it, sink or swim. I figured we'd blow the body off a time or two, but we'd stick with it."
And Friday night it paid off. Saturday remains to be seen.
"I hope it stays hot as blazes tomorrow," Pedregon admitted.
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Source: http://www.competitionplus.com/drag-racing/news/15575-cruz-pedregon-cruises-to-top-of-funny-car
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