When Funny Car contender Cruz Pedregon thinks about this weekend’s eighth annual ACDelco Las Vegas Nationals he’s quick to borrow a phrase from the most famous boxing referee in the city’s history, Judge Mills Lane—“Like Mills always said at the start of a heavyweight fight; Let’s get it on,” Pedregon said.
Locked in a fierce battle for the 2008 POWERade championship, Pedregon arrives at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in third place, just 69 points behind leader Tim Wilkerson and 18 back of second-place runner Jack Beckman. He also rolls into town with the most momentum, having won the NHRA’s last race in Richmond, Va.
“I’ve never been so ready to race,” said Pedregon, the 1992 world champion. “It seems like half a year has passed since Richmond. It’s cool on one hand because we’ve been able to really enjoy the victory but at the same time there’s a feeling like we wanted to race our Toyota again the very next day because we were running so well.
“We’ll be our same boring selves in Vegas. Rahn Tobler, our crew chief, had the car running so consistently in Richmond and that delivered a win to this Advance Auto Parts team. At the same time, we were sufficiently aggressive, obviously, because we qualified No. 1, so there is no reason to change our attack plan. We’re still going for it.”
Pedregon made a big move up in the points in Richmond and he knows he needs another significant move to have the best chance to win it all two weeks from now at the season-ending event in Pomona, Calif.
“I’d like to have Wilkerson and Beckman cooperate,” Pedregon said with a laugh. “Since we’re trailing them at the moment we are the ones that need to push it a little harder to close the gap. What’s really got us pumped up is we just got done proving we have the car to really make a charge. We’re peaking at the perfect time, and we’re not done yet.
“I’m really glad the final two races are in Las Vegas and Pomona because we’ve done well at both tracks. We won the fall race in Vegas two years ago, which was a huge moment for our team. And being a Southern California native, Pomona will always be a very special place for me.
“It’s all on us now to perform. We know what we need to do. We just need to go out there and execute every pass, starting with Friday’s first round of qualifying. Every run is huge at this point and we’re up for the fight.”
