FUNNY CAR

(Todd Dziadosz photo)

Cruz Pedregon continued to impress as a Countdown spoiler in Funny Car as he took his second victory in the post-season. Although not championship-eligible, Pedregon seems to be hitting his stride in his Snap-on Tools Toyota Camry. He held-off new series points leader and national record holder Matt Hagan in the final round. Pedregon covered the distance in 4.130 at 312.35 while Hagan trailed with a 4.242 at 301.13.

“I’ll be honest with you, if you had said a 4.13 was going to win that, I would have said no way,” said Pedregon, who beat Ashley Force Hood, his brother, Tony Pedregon, and Del Worsham to advance to the final.

“We tried getting after it. We were kind of going for broke. We thought unless we could run a mid-4.0 this guy was going to send us packing. He must have had problems, but it was just a good win for us. Hagan’s going to be tough. I told Matt and his dad, ‘You guys are on the green. You just need to putt it in.’”

(Todd Dziadosz photo)

It was an almost perfect weekend for Matt Hagan, driver of the DieHard Dodge Charger Funny Car at the 26th annual NHRA Nationals. He qualified No. 1 for the fourth time this year, the sixth of his career, set another national elapsed-time record (4.011 seconds), for which he earned 20 bonus points, and reached his fourth final round of the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series.