FUNNY CAR

Cruz Pedregon and his Snap-on Funny Car raced to victory with a win that moved the team into third in the season point standings, only seven points out of first with four races remaining. It was Pedregon’s 29th career Funny Car victory.

Pedregon captured the win in Dallas after qualifying first.  On his way to victory, Pedregon posted an impressive string of runs to secure his first win of the season, completing the final round in 4.200 seconds.

“The car was just so good all weekend,” said Pedregon. “I think this is probably the best race car I’ve ever had, with the exception of one run. We slipped up in the semis against Melanie Troxel. The track was hot, the hottest it’d been all weekend, and we got a little too aggressive with it. But other than that, the car was great, and I think I felt more pressure because we had such a great car. But it was fantastic to win.”

Jon Capps (right lane) made a rare appearance at an NHRA national event and managed to meet his brother, Ron, in the semifinal. NHRA regular Ron got the win with a 5.143 at 186.30 mph to Jon’s 6.536/143.20.

“It was a lot of fun running Jon, but I almost lost that one,” Ron said about the wild pedal fest where he had to fight the car to keep it off the wall. “It was a wild race and I almost gave it away. Unfortunately, we lost lane choice for the finals against Cruz.”

Mike Neff will leave the famed Texas Motorplex with the points lead but he got a little help from two unlikely competitors. In the premiere match-up of the first round at the AAA Texas NHRA Fall Nationals, points leader Neff dropped a close race to Matt Hagan, No. 2 in points, losing by five thousandths of a second at the finish line. Hagan left the starting line a shade quicker than Neff and his slower 4.172-second pass was enough to get to the stripe first in front of Neff’s 4.151-second run.