NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Somehow, it doesn’t seem all that long ago that Cruz Pedregon was the fresh-faced second-generation racer entering the nitro ranks with Larry Minor, but the Cornwell Quality Tools NHRA U.S. Nationals marks Pedregon’s milestone 700th NHRA Pro-class start, making him just the second driver to reach that lofty longevity plateau.

Only 16-time world champion John Force, with 861 starts, has competed in more races. With Force on the sidelines, perhaps permanently, Pedregon has become drag racing’s most tenured active Pro racer.

After cutting his drag racing teeth in diesel truck drag, Pedregon, the son of flamboyant “Flaming Frank” Pedregon, got his official start in NHRA Drag Racing in the Top Alcohol classes in the 1980s, collecting three wins driving for Gary Turner in Top Alcohol Dragster in 1988 and 1989 and a lone Top Alcohol Funny Car score in 1990 wheeling the Miner Bros. entry, before turning Pro with Larry Minor in 1991.

Pedregon, who was recommended to Minor by the late Joe Pisano, wheeled Minor’s Otter Pops-backed dragster at a dozen races in 1991, with the best of a semifinal finish in Seattle, where he defeated nitro legend Don Prudhomme and Cory McClenthan. When Minor’s Funny Car driver, Indy legend Ed McCulloch, asked to transfer into Top Fuel in 1992, Minor obliged and moved Pedregon into his Funny Car, changing the course of Pedregon’s career.

With sponsorship that year from McDonald’s, Pedregon won six races — including the U.S. Nationals — and the world championship. It was the only world championship of the 1990s that was not won by Force. Pedregon was with Minor through 1994, after which former NFL head coach Joe Gibbs took over the McDonald’s sponsorship. He stayed with Gibbs through the end of the decade and in 2000 launched his own team.

Pedregon won for the first time as a team owner in 2000, but the going wasn’t always easy — he DNQ’d at four of his other seven starts that year — and he spent the 2001 season on the sidelines (but running match races and doing TV commentary for NHRA) before returning in 2002 with sponsorship from Advance Auto Parts.

Although he competed in full seasons, Pedregon wouldn’t win again until the 2006 spring event in Las Vegas and two years later would collect his second world championship after a three-win season.

Pedregon partnered with Snap-on Tools beginning in 2010, a relationship that he continues to enjoy with more than a dozen wins in the intervening years. He has won at 17 different venues, including a dozen on the current schedule, but he hasn't won the U.S. Nationals since 1995, something he would dearly love to change on the occasion of his career milestone.

"I didn't really think about 700 races until it was brought up," Pedregon admitted. "I really try to focus on the here and the now, but I'm so grateful for the opportunities I was given as a driver, and I drove some really good cars and won some big races and two championships. My first championship was amazing, but I think when I won that second championship, as an owner, was when I knew I'd made it.

"You never really know what the budget and the financing it takes to run these cars. You just never know when that door is going to close. And so I've always had the mindset to really do all I can in and out of the car as a driver. because just being in this business is tough. 

"When we started off with a modest budget, and we still go up against teams that sometimes have twice the budget that we do. So that's probably the biggest challenge as an owner. But hey, I'm grateful to be here, and 700 is pretty cool. I'm grateful and honored, to be honest with you."