Abbott & Costello would have been proud of the first round, fourth quad of Funny Car at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals. When Matt Hagan was timed out in staging, the failure confused Tim Wilkerson, who sat on the starting line unsure of what was really going on. 

Cruz Pedregon thundered down the track to reach the stripe first, only to explode the supercharger in his Snap-on Tools entry. John Hale took the second spot with a 4.21. 

When Hagan timed out, he believed he was staged. 

"I wish I knew what happened out there," Hagan said. "I thought I was staged. I watched my first bulb come on to pre-stage and I thought I moved up to turn on the second bulb. I thought I got it in there. Cruz (Pedregon) turned the top bulb off beside me and I guess it caught my attention and I just didn't realize I wasn't staged."

Drivers have seven seconds to stage their cars by breaking the second and final beam that activates the second staging light on the starting line tree. 

"It was just very weird up there. I just never thought for a second that I wasn't staged. I just couldn't believe it when I saw the red light come on. It's just one of those deals."

Hagan isn’t looking for sympathy and owned up to the snafu which cost him the point lead. 

"There are no excuses," he said. "We had a great race car, we were the first to the finish line. Dickie [Venables, Hagan's crew chief] and the guys did a great job. I was just the weak link this weekend. 

"I proved to myself I was human. It's not one of those deals where we are going to see this situation again but I have to get myself together to come back out at the next race so I don't any mistakes at the starting line. It's a big lesson learned."

"I could see that someone wasn't staged, but then all of a sudden I see Hale leave and I'm thinking he red-lit, because I never saw the ambers flash," Wilk said. "At the top end, Cruz told me the same thing. He said he didn't know what was going on but thought he might have red-lit. All I knew was that everyone left me sitting there, and I didn't know why. 

"The problem is with the red bulbs on the tree,” said Wilkerson. “We have four sets of staging bulbs on each tree so that we can all see each other stage and that works fine, but there's only one red bulb on each side of each tree, like a normal two-wide tree. When Matt timed out, his red light came on but I didn't see that because he was over there in the other set of lanes. We need double red bulbs on these things if we're going to do this. I had no idea what was going on, and none of the other guys did either. That's the craziest loss ever."

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