Photo courtesy of Dragzine
Maple Grove Raceway is known as “the house of chaos,” and boy did it live up to its name during the 40th annual NHRA Reading Nationals presented by Nitro Fish.
Cruz Pedregon reminded everyone why he’s a two-time champ. Pedregon snapped a 55-race winless streak with a 3.969 at 330.63 mph run, taking down Blake Alexander in the final. The win was Pedregon’s first since 2022 and the 40th of his career.
Pedregon plowed through Bob Tasca III, points leader Austin Prock, and Paul Lee to reach the final. The win launched Pedregon to sixth in the standings and inserted him into the Funny Car title picture.
“This is very special, very special,” Pedregon said. “You know, you start to doubt yourself — as an owner, as a driver — and I’ve done that a lot the last couple of years. I thought, ‘Maybe this is it.’ But we took the hard road. I hired young guys who weren’t already on other teams. It was like a draft.
“We went through the growing pains, but now I’ve got a good group. They’re still learning, but they’re hungry, and now here we are. This morning, I told the guys there are six races left, including this one. I’ve won this race before and sat in the winner’s circle, wondering how we did it. We can do that again — just be mistake-free, be aggressive, and stay the course.”