Pedregon Marches To the Front, Finishes Career-High 7th In Prelude

On Wednesday night, two-time NHRA Funny Car world champion Cruz Pedregon had his best finish to date in the annual Feed The Children Prelude to the Dream at Tony Stewart’s Eldora Speedway in the cornfields of Rossburg, Ohio, taking the checkered flag in the seventh position in his Snap-On Tools No. 75 dirt late model.

Pedregon and fellow NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series competitor Ron Capps have both competed in all eight editions of the popular Prelude – which brings together stars from the NASCAR, IndyCar, drag racing, and dirt track world – and it seems the pair only get better with time.

Pedregon and Capps qualified 23rd and 24th, respectively, and Pedregon finished fifth in his heat race, while Capps didn’t fare as well ans brought up the tail in his race.

Pedregon started 18th in the 40-lap A-main amongst 26 cars and huggy-poled his way all the way up as high as second at one point, passing a number of stock car and drag racing veterans on his way, including three-time Prelude winner and track owner Tony Stewart and five-time Sprint Cup Series champ Jimmie Johnson. Unfortunately, Pedregon was outgunned on a late race restart in which he started on the outside and faded back to seventh, but still captured his best finish ever at what’s become one of the biggest attractions in all of motorsports.

Said OneDirt Editor John Gibson, who was busy hanging his camera out in the path of the Snap-On machine at Eldora: “Cruz is flying on the bottom here. No one is running as low as he is!”

“We had a plan coming into the feature,” said Pedregon. “(Crew chief) Rodney Dehaven Jr., said we are going to tighten the car up. I asked if we could run the bottom where it was moist and he said, ‘Yes.’ I just started running down there, got comfortable and started picking guys off. As I kept coming up on guys, I started seeing good cars that started way in front of me. I just kept my rhythm. The red (flag) certainly broke my rhythm and I had to restart on the top. My car was working so good on the bottom, I just couldn’t back down there fast enough. By the time I did, I had lost a few spots. It was all I could do to salvage a seventh. I really wanted a second or a win so bad. I think, had we not had the red, I really felt like we had a shot at it. I tied my career-best finish, so I’m pretty happy with that.”

As one of the top 10 finishers, Pedregon will get the honor of having a truck of food sent to his hometown or to a city of his choosing as part of the Feed The Children association with the annual fundraising race.

Capps, meanwhile, started 23rd on the grid and completed just three laps before getting caught up in an accident that cut his Prelude run short. Nonetheless, the real meaning of the evening was to have fun and raise both awareness and monetary funds for the Feed The Children Foundation, and win, lose, or draw, you can bet Capps and the Cruzer had a ball turning left for a change.