C. Pedregon

Two of the most familiar names in NHRA POWERade nitro drag racing -- Pedregon and Cerny -- will be side-by-side in 2004, five years after their last collaboration.

Cruz Pedregon, who has already launched a major thrust for capturing the 2004 NHRA Funny Car championship by bringing his brother, Tony, to his team for next season, made another significant change today by hiring veteran tuner Wes Cerny to make the calls on his combination when the new campaign gets underway in February.

Cruz and Cerny were the nucleus of the Joe Gibbs-owned F/C team wearing the Interstate Battery colors in 1998 and halfway through 1999, when Tommy Johnson Jr. replaced Cruz in the cockpit. Cerny has an impressive resume as a crew chief, having worked on Kenny Bernstein's Top Fuel dragster along with Dale Armstrong in 1992 -- the year Bernstein broke the 300 mph barrier.

He later was a key member of Don "The Snake" Prudhomme's Top Fuel team before moving to a number of title-contending teams throughout the remainder of the decade. Most recently, he served as tuner for Tony Schumacher's U.S. Army Top Fuel team and provided tuning consulting for Doug Herbert's Snap-On T/F operation.

"I'm so excited about everything lately with our team," said Cruz Pedregon, the 1992 NHRA Funny Car champion. "Being able to race with Tony is the fulfillment of a life-long dream, and having the commitment of Wes Cerny as our co-crew chief is the icing on the cake. The two-car team concept seems to be the way of the future. The key is being able to gather so much information from two cars that we will learn at twice the pace. Joining forces with my brother is the natural next step in our going to the next level and having a championship-caliber team.

"I've also promoted internally, appointing Tony Shortall to share the tuning responsibilities with Wes. Tony comes from the Alan Johnson and Dale Armstrong School of racing. He's been an excellent assistant and now his title will be co-crew chief. He's proven to me over the past season that he's ready to move into that position, and this is his chance to shine. He's so excited about being able to work with a guy like Wes and is looking forward to the opportunity."

"The Funny Car class is going to be a very, very competitive," said Cerny. "There are a lot of good cars out there, and it is going to take strong performance and good runs every time down the racetrack. The teams that have that will end up in the top portion of the ladder at the end of the year, and the teams that can't develop the consistency will fall by the wayside.

"My responsibility will lie specifically with Cruz's car. However, we're going to run the cars together and trade information back and forth so we can gain the input from both, giving us more than one car's performance to look at on the computer screen.

"I think Cruz and his brother, Tony are excellent drivers and we stand to get good feedback from both of those guys. Putting that all together is going to make us very competitive."

Bill Stephens covers the NHRA for ESPN and ESPN.com.