Tony Pedregon's No. 3 qualifying effort of 4.876 at 298.21 mph had a dramatic ending. Pedregon experienced a wild ride at the top end which virtually made his new Q Power-sponsored Chevy Impala body unusable.

"It was our first run with the new Impala body," said Pedregon, who is currently third in the POWERade point chase. "Visually I was very comfortable and it went straight as an arrow. The problem occurred with the mounting of the body. We didn't really have the conditions to test it anywhere. We had planned on running it a couple of races ago but just didn't have the right circumstances. So we felt that we would be able to put it on here and it wouldn't be a big issue. But what happened was the body collapsed in the front end," explained Pedregon.

Tony Pedregon's No. 3 qualifying effort of 4.876 at 298.21 mph had a dramatic ending. Pedregon experienced a wild ride at the top end which virtually made his new Q Power-sponsored Chevy Impala body unusable.

"It was our first run with the new Impala body," said Pedregon, who is currently third in the POWERade point chase. "Visually I was very comfortable and it went straight as an arrow. The problem occurred with the mounting of the body. We didn't really have the conditions to test it anywhere. We had planned on running it a couple of races ago but just didn't have the right circumstances. So we felt that we would be able to put it on here and it wouldn't be a big issue. But what happened was the body collapsed in the front end," explained Pedregon.

"Apparently there probably weren't supports where they needed to be. Of course, that set off a chain reaction. When it collapsed the front, it must have broke that section right in front of the injector, shoving that and hanging the throttle open. It was a very good run but when I went to shut it off it wasn't shutting off and that was probably the scariest part of the run; being off the throttle and looking for the chutes and running at the 1500-foot mark under full power.

"Fortunately one parachute came out, but what really shut the car off was it went lean because it ran out of fuel and it popped the blower. That did a little more damage but most of it was done because the body collapsed. It may be salvageable, but at this point we'll have to go back to our Monte Carlo body, which we've won races with and set the national record. Its just collateral damage, we're going to have to look at what caused the problem and fix that and address it with our new bodies that we'll get a few months from now."

On his second run Friday night Pedregon experienced more trouble when his car suffered parts failure and erupted into flames past the finish line.

"We just had a little parts failure but it still ran good," said Pedregon after the second run. "We've hurt a lot of parts and not ran good so I've got to look at the bright side of things. We've got a lot of depth and a good crew and we can get it fixed. We're going to put on a good show for these people." Pedregon finished the day qualified in the No. 4 spot.