Topeka: Cruz Pedregon final summary

Topeka, Kan., May 30, 2004 -- Former Funny Car champion Cruz Pedregon entered today's eliminator at Heartland Park Topeka qualified in the top-half of the field posting an elapsed time of 4.833 seconds at 311.277 mph to earn the seventh spot. He faced Tommy Johnson Jr. in the first round today, but left the line a little too early, fouling out. He was a hundredth of a second away from posting a perfect light.

"I went up to the line trying to get an advantage at the starting line and I just pulled the trigger a little early," said Pedregon. "I missed a perfect light by just a milli-second. Then right at the hit it dropped a cylinder. We've been having some issues with the ignition system and during that run one of the coils died."

"We were able to put a couple of good runs together during qualifying and put our car in the top-half of the field this weekend," added Pedregon. "We're going to keep plugging away, we've got a new coil testing fixture that we're going to use at our next race in Columbus and we feel comfident that we'll be back in top form."

Pedregon remains 11th in the NHRA POWERade Funny Car points standings.

The next event for the Advance Auto Parts racing team will be at National Trail Raceway in Columbus, Ohio on June 11-14.

-pr-