![\"Pedregon's](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Pedregon-action-min.jpg\")
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The past few years, highlight reels for Cruz Pedregon have been for his flying lessons (see Las Vegas 2\u2019s 2016 long wheelstand) rather than his NHRA Mello Yello Funny Car successes. There have been times when Pedregon hasn\u2019t qualified for races, gone out in the first round, generally had the types of problems that often befall single-car teams in NHRA drag racing. Still, the 1992 and 2008 Funny Car champion has continued to defy the odds by securing and keeping SnapOn\u00ae sponsorship for his red flopper as he always tries to up his game.<\/p>\n
Finally. Finally, victory for Cruz Pedregon came at the NGK Spark Plugs Four-Wide NHRA Nationals, held this past weekend on the zMAX Dragway dragstrip adjacent to Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. The second four-wide race of the year – on the first circuit to host a four-lane NHRA national event – was an event that pitted winners and runners-up against one another once the first round of eliminations was complete.<\/p>\n
The past few years haven\u2019t been the best for The Cruzer, who finished 10th in last year\u2019s Countdown to the Championship six-race playoffs; until his victory at Charlotte, Pedregon and his Toyota Camry flopper weren\u2019t even in the 2018 top 10 for the Funny Car category. Now he holds eighth-place points thanks to this victory, the Californian\u2019s 36th national Funny Car win that leads him past the legendary Don \u201cSnake\u201d Prudhomme for fifth all-time.<\/p>\n
To get his first Wally in 92 races, Pedregon defeated Tommy Johnson Jr. (Don Schumacher Racing Dodge Charger R\/T), Johnson\u2019s teammate Matt Hagan and John Smith (Chevy Monte Carlo). In the second round, he again defeated Johnson Jr., 2017 champ Robert Hight (Chevrolet Camaro SS from John Force Racing) and 2016 champ Ron Capps (DSR Dodge Charger R\/T).<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I pulled up in the final and saw Tommy Johnson Jr., I said to myself, \u2018Didn\u2019t we already race him twice today?\u2019 That\u2019s a Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) car; one of these runs he\u2019s going to get us,\u201d Pedregon said. \u201cThen I saw John and Courtney (Force, both in the finals with their JFR Camaro SS race cars) and I said to myself, \u2018Man, we\u2019ve got our work cut out for us.\u2019 I just didn\u2019t want to finish fourth, so I was going to do everything I could to not finish fourth – and we got the win. I didn\u2019t believe my ears when Caleb Cox, our team manager, got on the radio and said we\u2019d won. I said, \u2018I might have a little wax in my ears so I need to make sure I heard that right.\u2019 It\u2019s still a little bit surreal; I can\u2019t believe that we won this race. It\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Pedregon's](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Cruz-Pedregon-min.jpg\")
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For the team owner\/driver, his 36th victory ranks right up there with his first. \u201cBelieve it or not, I was thinking, \u2018Man, maybe I\u2019m not destined to win again.\u2019 Part of the make-up in my personality is that I don\u2019t want to do this unless I\u2019m competitive. To be out here racing is a lot of work and a lot of stress. I have a seven-year-old daughter and the travel is tough. What motivates me is having a good running car that people respect. This is like going back to my first win. This might just be the sweetest win of my career. It shows you can be a single, independent team with no attachments to the big teams, and if you hire the right people and have the funding you can win out here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, not so fast about the lack of attachment to larger teams in the NHRA professional paddock. Cruz Pedregon took delivery of a Don Schumacher Racing chassis over the off-season and that is the car he used to win in Charlotte. \u201cI called Don this winter and told him I needed a chassis. It was a very different chassis and we had to modify the cage, so we didn\u2019t debut it until Houston. Let me tell you, it\u2019s a good car. Thanks to Don – he\u2019s a businessman and he sold us a car. It works really good. We have another one on order and I think I will be able to afford to pay for it now,\u201d Pedregon near-laughed.<\/p>\n
Pedregon has partnered with Snap-On Tools since 2010, when he faced the spectacle of having a good sponsor but lacking a great team. \u201cI had a team where everyone had left me, all the crew and the crew chief. I had nothing until Snap-On came on board and sponsored me, and within a year we were winning races. I was tuning the car, but really my plate was full. By 2014 we started to win fewer races and by 2015 we just hit the wall,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was some technology going on in Funny Car that we weren\u2019t privy to and we fell behind as a team. So we had to regroup as a team. I went and hired Aaron (Brooks, who previously ran Morgan Lucas\u2019 Top Fuel team), who was hungry and very dedicated. Thankfully, this year we were joined by Glen Huszar, who has a lot of years with DSR and Kalitta, as assistant crew chief on the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s been a one-two punch. Last year was frustrating, because Aaron had his ideas and I had mine, but Aaron weathered the storm of my ranting and craziness and today we had a car that just won a race. It just goes to show if you stick with good people that they\u2019ll make you look good,\u201d Pedregon stated.<\/p>\n
There have been five different Funny Car winners in this year\u2019s initial six races, with No. 7 happening this coming weekend at Atlanta, home of the Southern NHRA Nationals. Three of those wins have come for Toyota-clad Funny Cars, with J.R. Todd picking up consecutive wins and Pedregon taking the third Wally trophy for the Japanese brand. This shows, as Cruz Pedregon pointed out, \u201cThe DSR and John Force cars don\u2019t have all the answers. We can stick our nose in there and mix things up with them.\u201d Pedregon is hoping momentum is now on his side through to the close of the 24-race 2018 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finally, victory for Cruz Pedregon came at the NGK Spark Plugs Four-Wide NHRA Nationals, held this past weekend on the zMAX Dragway dragstrip adjacent to Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":51173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[5614,604,38,41,7,1632,5929],"class_list":["post-51171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-cruz-pedregon","tag-funny-car","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-snap-on-tools"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Pedregon-action-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-djl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51174,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51171\/revisions\/51174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}