This win had been a long time in coming for Cruz Pedregon – 55 races, in fact.
Pedregon shocked the Funny Car field to claim the Wally at the NHRA’s 40th annual Reading (PA) Nationals presented by Nitro Fish.
In the finals, Pedregon clocked a 3.969-second elapsed time at 330.63 mph to defeat Blake Alexander’s 4.020 at 314.39.
“Very special, very special,” Pedregron said about this long-awaited win. “You get to doubting yourself as an owner, a driver, a lot of times. I don’t know that I did anything special other than, you know, we had to take the hard road and hire people that weren’t on other teams. [A lot] of owners like to hire proven guys, and I went with the draft, like college kids, and I got a bunch of young guys, man, and we kind of had to pay the price, go through the growing pains, but we’ve got a good group now. I got a good young group, and Jason Bunker’s the crew chief.
“He and I work together. I’m not going to lie, I’m involved with the setup with the car. But I told him, I go, ‘Man, I have 30 some years running a fuel car, so I’m a pretty good resource.”
Pedregon last won an NHRA national event at the season finale at the NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif., on Nov. 13, 2022. That also was the last time he advanced to a final round.
“This is a proud moment. You see it coming together with the guys. … If you look at the average age of my team, it’s probably like 33. I screwed it up and put it higher [because of] my age. The thing that I’m proud of is that the car ran well.
“I’m really pleased that the car went, as we call it, A to B, and most of the time, we didn’t go out, we weren’t swinging [with] crazy moves, we were just kind of racing within ourselves, and here we are.”
Pedregon qualified No. 7 with a 3.912 at 323.50 mph, and then proceeded to defeat Bob Tasca III, reigning world champ Austin Prock, Paul Lee, and then Alexander to snare his 40th Wally.
“We qualified in the top half of the field. I think we were third the last session, and we were second quick in E1,” Pedregon said. “We were second, I think, it went to Jimmy [Prock] and Austin and so that says a lot. We didn’t back into it.
“Austin smoked the tires against us, but I always look at them as if they were racing. They thought, ‘Hey, these jokers here can run a 92. They’ll probably do it again.’ So, I think it adds a little pressure when the track is warming up. The second round, we actually still had a car, and we blew through a clutch and ran that 4.04. It [puttered] down there, like some of these horses and buggies that are with the Amish people. I kind of felt like I was doing that a little bit, giving them a little love, too.”
Pedregon, who won NHRA Funny Car world championships in 1992 and 2008, had a simple plan for the finals.
“We just said, ‘Hey, let’s put that 92 setup in it because it’s starting to pull off a little bit, and I jammed it in there a little bit staging, so it ate a little ET up – but that’s okay, we got the win,” Pedregon said. “I heard Blake all the way down there, I thought, ‘Man, let’s get to the finish line here,’ and, yeah, so that was it.”
This was Pedregon’s third career win at Maple Grove, the others coming in 1992 and 2010. . His three wins in Reading tie him for second place in Maple Grove’s all-time Funny Car list with his brother, Tony Pedregon, along with Jack Beckman, Robert Hight, and Tommy Johnson Jr. John Force leads all-time Reading Funny Car list with seven wins.
“For many years, I’ve been coming here,” Cruz said. “I was telling people 1991 was my first year here in a Top Fuel dragster. Larry Minor brought me back here, and I was in the staging lanes. He just closed the deal on McDonald’s sponsorship, and Ed McCulloch, who was driving the Funny Car at the time, said, ‘Hey, I want to drive the dragster.’ So, Larry brought me into the lounge at this race in ’91 and asked me if I wanted to drive the Funny Car. I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I’d rather drive the Funny Car.’
“The next year we won the championship and derailed the great John Force. So, yeah, for years, I noticed the Amish people up here on the hills watching the races. If they’re paying attention – they have binoculars – and they were rooting for us, I sure hope they were.”
This season Pedregon had an 8-14 elimination round record – before Sunday – that included eight first-round losses. Still, Pedregon had confidence in his team that things would turn around.
“If you really paid attention to our car, really paid attention to the numbers, and look at how we qualified and who we had to race, it seemed like every time I turned around we were racing Matt Hagan or Austin, it’s like, ‘Man, if we could just get one of these other cars that give us a little breathing room, we got to come out swinging,’” Pedregon said. “And usually when you do that and try too hard, you’re going to beat yourself.
“But the car’s been coming around. If you look at the runs in Brainerd, man, we’ve been kind of nipping and making some really good runs, and we knew it was a matter of time.”
Nonetheless, Pedregon didn’t think he would be in the winner’s circle Sunday.
“Absolutely not. I do want to say this: I did have a meeting with my guys, and I said, ‘Guys, here’s what we’re going to do. There are six races left, including this one.’ That was this morning at 9. I said, ‘I’ve won this particular race a few times, and I remember sitting in the winner’s circle wondering, how in the hell did we win this race?’
“I said, ‘We can do that again today. But we just have to stay the course, be mistake free, be aggressive. We might go out there and Tasca might hand it to us.’ But I told them that, and I didn’t have any premonition, I just told them that because I wanted them to know that I just believe in this team, and here we are. I told them that down at the finish line there. I said ‘Remember when I said that,’ and they all shook their heads.”
The veteran Pedregon also knows some luck also plays a factor in winning Wallys.
“I believe that a little luck plays a role in anybody who wins these races, I don’t care if it’s Hagan or Austin” Pedregon said. “I remember I was watching John Force for years, running well, and then there were those times that he would not run so well, but the other guy in the other lane would race The Great John Force, and Austin Coil, and he putts on down there and wins races. That’s what we did a little bit of today, but still a car performed.”
Pedregon also was pleased to deliver a victory for longtime sponsor Snap-on Tools.
“Hey, they’ve stuck with me all these years, and it’s 105th anniversary and their body is on the car,” Pedregon said. “When you have a company like that, it’s pressure because I see Mac Tools win, I see Matco and Cornwell and Carlyle, I think it’s called. I say there’s room for all the tool companies because that’s a great product. They all have a purpose in this world. But Snap-on’s a great product.
“There’s a little pressure, but I’m glad that we put them in the winner’s circle and got them to get some TV time, finally.”
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