Cruz Pedregon confident as NHRA playoff action begins

Cruz Pedregon hasn’t had the season he’s wanted in the NHRA Funny Car class.

But the beauty of the series format is that regardless of how things have gone for the two-time series champion, he has time to turn things around in the six-race Countdown to the Championship.

The playoffs begin this weekend with the NHRA Carolina Nationals at zMAX Dragway in Concord, N.C.

While there are no guarantees that Pedregon and his Toyota Camry will win his first title since 2008, he’ll certainly be fast.

Pedregon, 51, has been fast all season during qualifying, but it hasn’t translated to success in the finals. He’s just the second driver in Countdown history to make the playoffs without advancing to a final round.

The way Pedregon looks at it, however, is that maybe his team is due.

“With six races to go, I think we’re going to be as good as we can be for this year,” said Pedregon, who has won at least one race since 2009. “We’re a wild card. I don’t know if we even know what we can do at this point. We did lose some races just because of luck.

“The arrow’s definitely pointed for us at this point. We just don’t know how up at this point.”

Pedregon’s confidence is buoyed that his team found issues with some internal parts in his car midway through the season. The team changed its approach and had some success in testing before a solid run at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis ended with a close loss to John Force.

He’s ninth in points now, but just 100 out of first after the reset for the Countdown.

“There are no excuses,” said Pedregon, who has 35 career victories. “I don’t know that we can sit here and say we’re out of it yet. Given the Countdown format we’re really five rounds out of the lead. Anything can happen. These playoffs are meant to make it anybody’s race at this point. That’s what we’re banking on.”

He’s also banking on having success at tracks where he’s won before. That includes Texas Motorplex in Ennis. If Pedregon can remain in the hunt by the time the series hits Ennis for the AAA Texas NHRA FallNationals, he likes his chances there, too.

The Oct. 15-18 event is the fourth stop in the Countdown, and it’s a track that Pedregon has won at four times.

“I prefer the warmer track conditions as opposed to the cooler ones,” Pedregon said. “It takes good race strategy. If it’s warm there, the track will bite you. For some reason, the dryer air agrees with our tuner. Whatever it is, we’re going to keep dialing it up.”

Pedregon can also afford to be more aggressive. Because of the struggles to figure out what was causing the piston issue, the team had to be cautious and focus on qualifying runs and just getting into the Countdown field.

“We can race as hard as we can and throw caution into the wind,” he said. “During this process I got a little conservative just because I was trying to protect the motor. We got so gun shy, and it kind of played with my mind a little bit. We’re now back to being aggressive. That’s the only way I know how to win.”

This story was originally published September 18, 2015 at 2:05 PM with the headline "Cruz Pedregon confident as NHRA playoff action begins."