The awful truth is that had Pedregon seen his light go red at the start of the run, he would have had no cause to mash the throttle all the way down his lane. And if his Chevy Impala had given him any hint of the destruction that it was about to cause, the seasoned second-generation driver would have adjusted and lifted.
"A lot of times when something happens to your car, like when you drop a cylinder, you feel it, and I would have reacted," Pedregon said. "When I got out of the car I thought, ' I can't believe the car finally stopped and I'm going to get out of it.' I got out of it slowly, because I wanted to make sure the car was completely stopped."
And -- oh yeah -- Force. Can't forget Force on his semi-triumphant return . . . with the emphasis on "semi." His team landed three cars in the semifinals (where he lost to Hight and Ashley Force lost to Cruz Pedregon ).
After all the attention on Force's return to the cockpit and his phenomenal recovery that literally has him functioning again as simply a human being and not just a racer, Force almost seemed to emphasize a different message. By day's end, he was talking about the future, sounding more like a man who might follow Kenny Bernstein's lead in retirement and team management.
He never said that. In fact, he said the opposite. "It's all about these kids now," he said before the weekend. "I'm still going to race as hard as ever to win the championship. That won’t change. But my main job now is to (continue to) train (these young) drivers so that they won’t have to go through what I went through."
If milestones are his fancy, Force is on the cusp of at least one. He's only six short of 1,000 elimination round-wins. But that certainly doesn't seem to be what excites him these days.
"I'm excited for Robert Hight," Force said. "He was on his game last year. He was right in the hunt to win the championship last year. To see Ashley evolve as driver and gather up her Mustang when it was in trouble to get the win. She learned a lot in her rookie year. I think Mike Neff is going to be fantastic. I think he is a just a natural, and Robert has said that too,
"I've still got a couple of months of rehab to get back to where I was," he said. "I've got a well-rounded team. That is what is important to me, that what we went after to build a better race car with the people involved worked. It is heavier but it can compete and it isn't that expensive to buy. If you have to buy one you will spend a little more, but it is nothing when you are talking about safety."
Force, whose public-relations missives refer to him as "The Elvis of the Asphalt," is back for his 24th season with Castrol and his 32nd overall. And since 1990, he has appeared nearly half of all the final rounds in the series (181 of 381).
Is Force ready to be back? Only he knows, and evidently he says yes. Wise men say only fools rush in, but he just can't help falling in love with the challenge.