Phoenix: Cruz Pedregon Saturday summary

Chandler, Ariz., March 6, 2004 - Former Funny Car champion Cruz Pedregon and the Advance Auto Parts Racing team held on to their Friday night qualifying run of 4.900 seconds at 311.99 mph to earn the ninth quickest spot for the NHRA Nationals at Firebird International Raceway.

"The car is getting more consistent which was our goal," said Pedregon. "The performance of the car is there. On that last run tonight it dropped a cylinder at about half-track but we still managed a 4.939 second elapsed time at 306.40 mph. So, we're pleased with how the car is responding. "

However, for the first time this season as teammates, Cruz will have to face his brother Tony in the first round of eliminations tomorrow. Tony ran an elapsed time of 4.883 seconds to move just ahead of Cruz for the eighth spot.

"It's good in a sense because one of us is guaranteed to go on to the next round," said Pedregon. "We knew it would happen eventually. Of course we would rather meet later in the day, but it doesn't always work out that way. We don't look at this as being a bad thing at all. This just shows how closely the cars are setup and how we're trying to make them similar. It will be a thrill for the fans, because they always like watching a two car team go head-to-head. We're just going to go up there and run our own race and see what happens."

Gary Densham earned the low qualifier award with an elapsed time of 4.773 seconds at 323.04 mph.

Television coverage of final eliminations can be seen on Sunday, March 7 from 7:00 p.m. -- 10:00 p.m. (ET)

-pr-