VIVA LA NITRO!

Las Vegas Motor Speedway, October 26. As the sun sets on Vegas, the top two funny-car drivers on earth prepare for a final drag race, a four-second shoot-'em-up that will settle who is the baddest hombre in a fire suit for 2003. Like Vegas, there's nothing subtle about funny cars: The motors have nitromethane – a poor man's rocket fuel and a Class A explosive – coursing through the fuel lines. The drivers have ice water flowing through their veins. If all goes well, the drag racers will follow a mind-altering timeline to victory: 0 to 100 mph in less than a second. 0 to 250 mph in 3 seconds. 0 to over 320 mph in 4 seconds. The first guy to cover a quarter-mile wins.

To the east, the skies darken precipitously, and the winds blow the moon around. To the west, behind the drag strip and down Vegas Boulevard, the lights of Sin City boom into the desert sky. But the point of singularity is the Speedway's starting lights. There, in an absurdly amped-up carbon fiber mutation of a Dodge Stratus, Whit Bazemore, a towheaded, brown-eyed Lance Armstrong doppelganger, sits behind a burbling 7,000-horsepower engine. His crew cinches the fighter-pilot-strength seat belts to a tension that will withstand an instant gravitational pull five times that of Bazemore's body weight – and yet somehow not crush Whit's ribs.

In the opposite lane, Chicano drag racer Tony Pedregon and his crew go through a similar drill on a bastardized simulation of a Ford Mustang. Pedregon, by his own account, is here by a quirk of fate, a quarter-mile away from claiming the Funny Car Title of the Universe. Tony is a hired driver, a “second shoe” for the dynasty known as John Force Racing. John Force has driven his way to 11 of the last 12 Funny Car Points Titles.

“I used to drive a truck in this town, and my buddies would say, ‘Force, c'mon back and drive a truck and tell stories because you aren't going to win any drag races.” – John Force, I Saw Elvis at a Thousand Feet

Ahh, John Force, the Lonesome Rhodes of Drag Racing. Force was a hobo truck driver who had a dream and quit his day job, went off racing nitro funny cars and then set himself on fire so often that he burned his begged, borrowed, and stolen inventory to the ground. Whereupon he got serious and parlayed people's generosity into a drag-racing empire that would make Colonel Tom Parker, Charles Foster Kane, and Wal-Mart blink. He's the funny-car driver who said, “I want that Elvis Presley following. When they bury me, buddy, I want the fans to come by and see me.” Notoriously loquacious and given to stream-of-consciousness flows, Force is a crew cab of a man and a frothy anthropomorphic run-on sentence who has singlehandedly gathered a brain trust of engineers, mechanics, and aerodynamicists with talent rivaling any space program and whose sole function is to install Force in the winner's circle, race after race after race. Over the past decade, Force has shocked-and-awed his opponents with the relentless and ruthless precision of Attila the Hun, Babe Ruth's New York Yankees, and Napoleon.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Las Vegas, 2003: For the first time in a generation, Force is not in contention for the National Hot Rod Association's Funny Car Title. Eight years ago, Force hired Tony Pedregon to run a second car, a “research and development” funny car, whose raison d'être is to test avant-garde technologies that will push the team's competitive envelope. It's a win-win for Force: If the new equipment – say, an experimental camshaft “grind,” or an aerodynamic approach, or a trick fuel pump – fails, it fails on Tony's car, and he, not Force, loses the race and the precious title points. And if the new piece of kit works better than what the competition is using, it is immediately installed on Force's Mustang.

The second function of Pedregon's racing entry is to eliminate the competition, which is to say any of the other race teams with the potential to unseat John Force as the Ultimate Funny Car Driver of the Year. And, when it comes to the moment when teammates Force and Pedregon have to square off in a race, well, let's just say that, all-of-a-sudden-like, some of that experimental gear on Tony's funny car won't work all that well. In boxing, like drag racing, this is known as “going in the tank.”

Tony Pedregon had been hired as a ringer. And as a racer, it had been tearing his heart out for eight years. In 2003, Force had an uncharacteristically sub-par year and was out of contention for the Points Title. Ergo, at Vegas, Pedregon wasn't taking a dive no more.

The Brothers Pedregon

“We don't have any egos on this team, except for mine.” –John Force, ibid.

The only driver to dent John Force's brutal domination over the NHRA Funny Car Points Title is Tony's eldest brother, Cruz Pedregon, who won the tournament in 1992. In the scope of history, it is a small victory, as Force won consecutive championships from 1993 until 2002, and as late as September, pundits maintained Force still had a chance of rallying to beat Tony Pedregon and nemesis Whit Bazemore.

At the Vegas race, rumors swirled like a casino ashtray about Tony Pedregon joining his brother Cruz – and maybe even their middle brother, Frankie, also a funny-car driver – in establishing a two- or three-car “dream team” to challenge the hegemony of Force and squash the title hopes of other super teams, including Bazemore's.

On Saturday, the day before the Bazemore/Pedregon showdown, Cruz takes a time trial in his Pontiac Firebird funny car that lands him in the hospital: He approaches the finish line at a maximum velocity of nearly 300 mph, and everything goes Space Shuttle. Cruz's supercharger explodes under stress, and nitromethane flows simultaneously into both the intake and exhaust ports of the never-more-aptly-named combustion chambers of the cylinder heads. KA-BOOM! The Firebird is instantly shredded. What was once a race car is now a swing set on wheels, out of control, on fire, the braking parachutes swirling in the wind. Momentarily blinded by flames and oil, and valiantly trying to stop what is left of the car, Cruz shoots across both lanes of the drag strip like Mr. Magoo and – POW! – punches into a safety retaining wall at high speed. Then the car mercifully bounces to a halt. Miraculously, after a brief stop at what drag racers call “the White Sheet Hotel” for evaluation, doctors conclude Cruz's biggest injury is to his hearing.

The crash only cranks up the chatter about the Pedregon Brothers racing as a team in 2004. And, two weeks later, Cruz is back in a funny car at Pomona Raceway for the NHRA Series Finale.

Flamin' Frank

San Fernando Raceway, 1964. A primitive drag strip – nowadays an outdoor flea market – runs perpendicular to Glenoaks and Foothill boulevards in the Valley. A concrete flood-control channel flanks the western edge. At the end of the track, the only safety barrier separating the racing surface from the drainage ditch is a chain-link fence.

On a Sunday afternoon typical of the era, “Flamin' Frank” Pedregon is racing “Wild Bill” Alexander in a Top Fuel dragster match, when chaos and providence provide Pedregon with an opportunity to exercise his twisted, macabre sense of humor.

As the dragsters cross the finish line, “Wild Bill” pulls his parachutes, but, in the other lane, Pedregon's “Taco Taster” dragster veers left, hits the chain link and disappears into the horizon. Alexander, the track owner, and a coterie of grease monkeys give chase. Where the dragster had finally stopped tumbling, they are accosted by a grisly sight: Pedregon lying a couple of yards away, face down with his arms spread like a post-crucifixion still life. As ambulance workers climb through the tangled fencing, Frank's wife drives up in a station wagon with three young boys in the back. Nobody can tell if Pedregon is breathing.

Just as track workers reach Frank, he leaps to his feet with a roar and begins pointing, laughing, and howling, “I fooled you! I fooled you! I'm okay! I'm okay!”

Tony Pedregon, still in diapers, is one of the kids in the station wagon. Frankie and Cruz are the others. Almost 40 years later, I am in Tony's trailer at the Pomona drag races, and he tells me about that day. “It was just the sense of humor my dad had,” he says. “When the other driver and the ambulance people showed up, my old man just stood up and said, ‘I've got you MFs.' And I don't think ‘MFs' stood for ‘my friends.'”

Times have changed since Frank called his car the “Taco Taster” and billed himself as “The World's Fastest Mexican.” A dashing, mustachioed ladies' man and a fearless daredevil, Frank Pedregon is absolutely legendary in “bench race” circles (the B.S. sessions that take place over beers). Tales of his bravery, insanity, and swagger – faking his death, setting his rear tires on fire for the spectacle of it, inadvertently gathering unsuspecting rattlesnakes in parachutes, etc. – cloud the ether thick as a bowl of menudo. I recently asked a group of old-time drag racers if they had any Frank Pedregon anecdotes. One graybeard told me, “At Beeline Raceway in Tucson, we were warming the car up and changing oil and so on, when Frank pointed to a pile of oil cans on the ground and turned and said to me, ‘Where did all of those Mess-a-cans come from?'”

About Pedregon's playfulness with his taxonomy, the racer remembers, “Frank always used to say, ‘When I see green-go'…”

Another retired drag racer, Wayne “the Peregrine” King, is loaded with sentiment: “In '69, Frank was racing at Fresno, doing his flaming-tire deal,” he recalls. “Frank was making a pass and was blinded by the flames. He veered off the track, with lots of dust and tumbleweeds flying. Frank's wife and the family were terrified that he had crashed. They raced down the track, ´´ stopped at the pavement's edge, all four doors of the station wagon flew open, and the whole Pedregon family ran to the crash site. Frank was fine. The only injury was to his wife. She stepped into a gopher hole and broke her leg. They held up the race until the ambulance came back from taking her to the hospital.”

I ask Tony Pedregon what he remembers about his childhood. “Our first house was in Chino,” he says. “My dad nicknamed one of his race cars the ‘Chicken Coupe' because we had chickens in the backyard. When the car wasn't running, chickens lived in it.”

Later, the family moved among the scrapyards of Gardena, adjoining Compton. “I was raised in an environment where I heard the sirens and the gunshots,” Tony says. “We used to sleep three in a room. I know Cruz's feet very well. It was a one-bedroom house, and that is what a lot of Hispanic people here are up against.”

Tony remembers his mom as being “fundamental but understated, and to this day mild-mannered and supportive,” and his dad as being incredibly resourceful and scrappy. “My dad would fabricate everything in his race car, from the chassis to the motor. He'd get other guys' junk – stuff they literally would throw in the trash – and he'd go run faster than they would.

“He wrote on his car, ‘The World's Fastest Mexican.' My dad was one of the few guys who said, ‘Hey, I'm Mexican.' He also put on the back of his car, ‘Adios Amigo.' That was a statement. And if you messed with him, you probably had to fistfight him.”

Racing for La Raza

We are talking about Tony's mixed Latino and Caucasian fans. I am struck by Tony's movie-star countenance and playfulness with the language, with a delivery not unlike Oscar de la Hoya sparring in the gym. I ask about his Hispanic fans, and he says they are his inspiration.

“La Raza has become more important to me,” he says. “After we moved to Torrance, I wound up at some private school. And, hey, that's parenting; you always want what's best for your kids. And because of that, I thought this [image of a] very mild-mannered, very proper person who wanted to do absolutely everything that the sponsors and John Force Racing wanted him to do [was the way to go]. But that only goes so far. I really have a passion for people of my ethnic background and heritage. I like people in general, but I've found out that I have inspired them in some way to fulfill some of their needs, too.”

Tony takes a breath, like a bell rang. Then he says, “I don't lay out in the sun to get the tan. I speak the language. This is the way that I am.”

How does he put that into action?

“AAA has this program, Youth in Education. They send me into high schools and middle schools in Pomona, Rancho Cucamonga, all the way to Texas. We're going to a school that is 99 percent Hispanic, and that is really where I come from. I go in with Gary Densham [John Force Racing's third team driver, who happens to be Caucasian], and I don't care what his credentials are, you want to get their attention? I told 'em, ‘You guys want to send Densham in there [to the barrio], send him with me, and he'll be okay.'”

A Familia Affair

“I think my dad's personality was split into thirds,” Tony says. “Cruz inherited the temperament. The impatience. I got the artistic side. Frank does his own thing, like my dad. I mean, we came from a broken home, and he has …”

“A wandering eye?”

“Yeah.”

By the mid-1970s, Flamin' Frank had hung up his fire suit and begun concentrating on his trucking business. His connections ran from Texas to California and into Mexico, and he had taken use of a private plane for business. On a trip into Mexico, he crashed near a highway that led into a sleepy villa. The crash had severed an arm, and he bled profusely, yet he managed to make it to the highway, whereupon he had to make a decision like the one Robert Frost once wrote about. Unfortunately, in his confusion, Frank Pedregon took the road less traveled, walking away from any possible medical help in the nearby town. This time, he didn't fake his death.

Tony says, “I remember I was at a race, and Frankie and Cruz showed up. My dad had been missing … and I just knew.”

Tony remembers how he and Cruz raced each other in Texas a few years ago. He says, “Cruz and I were the first brothers to race in an NHRA finals. The starter said he looked up to the sky as we staged the cars and said, ‘You'd be proud of these guys.'”

He confirms the rumours about leaving John Force Racing. He's teaming up with Cruz and leaving the most successful dynasty in the history of drag racing. He cites his dad's legend as one of the factors.

“My dad was a leader, and not a follower,” he says. “My dad was about doing things on your own. For me to accomplish some of the things I want to do, I need to be in control. To continue that legacy is important.”

Plus, some of it is personal. “Maybe part of the reason I'm leaving is that I am in John's shadow,” Tony says.

He is on a journey. I am trying to figure how much of it is Don Quixote, how much Cesar Chavez, and how much Tony Robbins. He says he wants the community to “have better things for their kids. To live a better life. Maybe my dad wasn't around long enough to say, ‘You don't have to chase women like I did and do what I did.' He never really told me, but I learned that.”

La Raza is now part of Tony's vision. For the exploding Spanish market in autos and auto sport, the Pedregons are a sponsor's dream.

“We did it the hard way,” Tony says. “Everything that Cruz did, he did it on talent. He got in the car, and he performed. And, of course, now it has evolved into corporate America. Are you a good spokesperson? Can you deal with the media? Are we good representatives to the companies that have invested money in us? And that's how you make it in this business we're in.

“But I'm not trying to live up to anybody's expectations,” he continues. “When I was in Houston, parts of my interviews were in Spanish. I won the Atlanta race the day before Cinco de Mayo. I gave my interview in Spanish there, too. The sponsors said, ‘We don't know what you said, but it was great.' What they're interested in is going to where their market share is down. In Southern California, in Texas, in Florida – these are big Hispanic markets.”

Victory del Fuego

I ask Tony about this final-round race over Bazemore in Vegas, the heat that decided the season's Points Title. He laughs.

“Before I got in the car, I went up and shook Whit's hand. I said to him, ‘Let's just get out of this alive.'”

From a spectator's vantage point, the race was spectacular. The starting lights went green, and both drivers stomped on the throttle. At half-track, Tony's tires began spinning furiously, and Bazemore started putting car lengths ahead of Pedregon. Tony remembers the moment well.

“The last thing I thought it would do was smoke the tires [lose traction],” he says. “Probably out of fear, I got lucky and reacted to what the car did at the moment. When the car got loose the first time, I rolled out of it and then floored it again. I hit the first one just right, but I knew it was losing traction because I heard the motor coming unglued.”

Bazemore, however, was having similar problems. His car was also putting out too much horsepower; more than a cold track surface could process, and he began to spin the tires. Pedregon smelled blood.

“‘I don't care if this car is on fire,'” he recalls thinking. “The car made a move, and it fishtailed. The sidewalls started to rock, and it wasn't stable. Again, I rolled out the throttle and rolled back into it. I knew the motor was going south. I saw that win light and let out years of frustration.”

As Tony crossed the finish line, his motor exploded and created a pyrotechnics display. “I got so excited. I forgot to pull the parachutes. I was screaming,” he says. “I was yelling. I saw the [emergency] sand traps coming. The car was on fire, but I didn't care.”

I'm taking pictures of Tony greeting his fans. A prepubescent little curtain-climber makes his way through the legs of the teeming masses of nitro-addled and beer-besotted race fans and approaches Tony for an autograph, clutching a copy of National Dragster magazine, whose cover is a collage depicting Tony's triumph at Las Vegas.

Tony scrawls across his picture with a Sharpie as the boy points to a shot of the racer, crouching on his knees, overcome with emotion and burying his head into his fire gloves.

“Why were you crying?” the kid asks.

Pedregon goes all W.C. Fields on him: “How do you know I was crying? We were in the desert, and there was sand blowing all over the place. How do you know I don't have something in my eye?”