Pedregon drives Camry to top spot in Houston NHRA qualifying

TORRANCE, Calif. -- (April 27, 2013) – Cruz Pedregon out-distanced the field with a blistering 4.086-second pass in his Snap-On Tools Toyota Camry Friday night to earn the top qualifying spot in Funny Car in preparation for Sunday’s NHRA O’Reilly Auto Parts SpringNationals at Royal Purple Raceway in Baytown, Tex. Saturday’s qualifying for both Nitro classes was rained out. It is the second number one qualifying effort of the season for Pedregon, who will be looking for his second win of the year as well. He enters Sunday’s competition second overall in points.

Cruz Pedregon

Photo by: NHRA

"It was a flawless pass that really set me back in the seat right at the hit of the throttle," Pedregon said. "It really pulled hard all the way through, and I knew it was a good pass. But we weren't trying to knock it out of the park, and our goal was just to keep all eight cylinders lit all the way to the finish line. I honestly would have been happy with a 4.12 or a 4.13. So we were really thrilled with the 4.08."

Three Toyota-sponsored Top Fuel cars qualified in the top four on Friday. Al-Anabi Racing teammates Khalid alBalooshi and Shawn Langdon each ran the exact same time with alBalooshi earning the second spot based on speed, placing Langdon third. Antron Brown earned the fourth seed. Morgan Lucas Racing teammates Morgan Lucas and Brandon Bernstein placed ninth and tenth.

Rounding out the Toyota Funny Car contingent behind Pedregon was Alexis DeJoria in 12th, Tony Pedregon in 13th and Del Worsham in 15th.

Toyota NHRA