Tony Pedregon refused to get frustrated, but the task at hand was clearly getting the best of him as rain fell on Firebird Raceway. A once simple task of applying decals suddenly took on a bit of complexity with a seriously burned hand sporting a protective glove.

“If I had two good hands, I’d be able to do a lot better at this,” Pedregon explained, as he pulled off his third attempt at placing a Chevrolet decal on his new Impala Funny car body.

This was a task he was unable to complete during his week off between events. Most of his off week was spent working with the doctors and nursing his burned hands to the point he could use them to drive this weekend. His right hand received second degree burns.

Tony Pedregon refused to get frustrated, but the task at hand was clearly getting the best of him as rain fell on Firebird Raceway. A once simple task of applying decals suddenly took on a bit of complexity with a seriously burned hand sporting a protective glove.

“If I had two good hands, I’d be able to do a lot better at this,” Pedregon explained, as he pulled off his third attempt at placing a Chevrolet decal on his new Impala Funny car body.

This was a task he was unable to complete during his week off between events. Most of his off week was spent working with the doctors and nursing his burned hands to the point he could use them to drive this weekend. His right hand received second degree burns.

“I think every finger has some blisters on it but it was mostly the three middle fingers that got most of the damage,” Pedregon said. “The good news is that I've been recovering. My doctor was pretty impressed with my recovery. He said I'm recovering as fast as he's ever seen a person recover. I hope that's just due to being healthy and being fortunate. He was actually encouraged about it.”

Pedregon admitted his doctor initially encouraged him to sit out Phoenix. However, once the doctor saw how quickly Pedregon's recovery was progressing that changed his mind and left Pedregon feeling fortunate.

After the team examined the engine from the Pomona incident, Pedregon knows what triggered one of the worst Funny Car explosions and fires in the history of the sport. So intense was the fire two of the three major networks carried the story.

“It broke a cam gear on us,” said Pedregon. “I knew I had fouled out and that happened because of outside interference from the radio. I went ahead and ran it and wanted to run it out about 800 to 900 feet and then shut off.”

Pedregon had only one good qualifying run to his credit in qualifying and was about to lift when his car turned into an inferno of parts.

“There have been some cars that have broken cam gears before but I think what made ours so violent is that it happened down the track,” Pedregon said, adding, “If the same thing happened closer to the starting line it's not as violent as at that high rate of speed. When those parts blow up and you get the oil mixed with the fuel igniting and you've got that kind of wind it makes it pretty intense.”

What I don't think a lot of people realize is that Cruz and I have sort of redeveloped the halo in our roll cage. That whole system, the early stages of that, we were the first ones to show up with that on our race cars in 2004. That was when I formed my own team and Cruz had the accident in Vegas when he hit the wall. We've always communicated and we've always told one another that there is not sufficient padding in this roll cage. I remember fabricating those pieces myself when we were trying to build a team. - Tony Pedregon

 

Pedregon admitted he’s as comfortable as ever climbing behind the wheel this during the NHRA CSK Nationals in Phoenix.

“Every time I get in a car I've always thought of the different things and you have to,” Pedregon confided. “How can you not when you're sitting there staring at the Christmas tree? You're sitting there with the drive shaft between your legs. I always have, I've never had one catch me off guard quite like that. I've never gotten out of the car and thought 'Hey, I'm alive!' I think I'm going to exercise the same caution that I always have. I think that's the only thing that I can ask of my team.

“Sometimes I think we're just at the mercy of parts. There's always going to be some weak link. I'm not going to be naive and think that something like this can't happen again, however, I do believe between my fire suit and all of the safety features then the roll cage, really everything with exception of the gloves I mean I'm still trying to figure out why it was only my right hand. If you saw the fire you'd think my whole body would be in bad shape but I've got to tell you, my suit held up better than I thought it would, my helmet held up better than I thought it would. I literally got the impression that, outside of my right hand, we're just looking at maybe putting some kind of shield.

Pedregon continued, “I'm going to get in just as cautious as ever. I don't think we do much to compromise the safety of these cars but if all this is being analyzed by Ringers, who made the gloves I was wearing, maybe they can build a better glove or maybe there's something we can do, maybe we can build a shield that's going to help in the event of that same type of event. I know every time I reach for that brake, the number one thing I knew I needed to do was to slow the car down.

“I knew that I somehow needed to get it stopped and every time I'd reach for that brake it was burning my hand. Again, I think we're going to learn some things from this but I think it's easier for me to make this decision because I'm not lying in a hospital. I'm actually just nursing some minor burns on my hand. I'm going to be smart about it but I feel good about everything else that that car did. I think there are a lot of other scenarios that could've gone wrong but for a lot of reasons, I think, it kept me in tact.”

Pedregon pointed out that he and his brother Cruz, also an NHRA Funny Car driver with experience in emerging from hideous explosions, were proactive prior to last season’s newly implemented Funny Car chassis safety items.

“What I don't think a lot of people realize is that Cruz and I have sort of redeveloped the halo in our roll cage,” said Pedregon. “That whole system, the early stages of that, we were the first ones to show up with that on our race cars in 2004. That was when I formed my own team and Cruz had the accident in Vegas when he hit the wall. We've always communicated and we've always told one another that there is not sufficient padding in this roll cage. I remember fabricating those pieces myself when we were trying to build a team.

“He and I have always been very cautious and very conscience of when we should be. We're brothers and we don't want to see one another get hurt. Some of the fires that he'd been in I learned from. He always stressed to me that gloves are important and wear the inner liner gloves. Again, I think that a lot of guys that had been through that experience are really the reason that some of the safety features have evolved the way they have. I would say Bill Simpson has pioneered a lot of that too. He was one of the first people I called. I wore his fire suit for the first time and it burned through the first layer and transferred the heat. As massive as that fire was the pant legs got burnt through the first couple of layers and still nothing. I didn't get  burned and I already have the sun tan so it wasn't a speck of anything.

“Even the helmet, there have been explosions not even close to that where it's blown the drivers shield open and that was one of the things that I liked about the impact helmet. The shield was more precise and I liked the way it snapped close. I thank God that I have a deep impact helmet cause if that thing would've blown open I would've had no means of protection. Again, I think that's one of the things that could've gone the other way but it didn't because I think there was a safeguard that were there.”