He’s Hot Now : Since a Federal Search of Larry Minor’s Property in July, His Drag Racing Team Has ‘Caught Fire’

Last July 27 was one of the darkest days of Larry Minor’s life. The FBI swarmed over the cattle feedlot at his multimillion-dollar Agri-Empire Co. in San Jacinto, searching for containers of toxic chemicals they claimed were buried there.

For 30 days they dug and scratched, apparently turning up nothing more sinister than a couple of empty coffee cans. But the damage to Minor was done when TV and newspapers splashed the start of the search in headlines. There were no headlines proclaiming the fact that no hazardous material was found.

Minor, a former National Hot Rod Assn. top-fuel driver and car owner, tried to focus his attention on his two-car drag racing team--but it wasn’t doing well, either.

The first 12 races of the season brought only one victory. Cruz Pedregon, Minor’s rookie funny-car driver from Moorpark, won the Slick 50 Nationals at Houston. Ed McCulloch, his veteran top-fuel driver from Hemet, lost in the first round in the first four events and was still struggling when the NHRA season reached the halfway point in Denver--the day before the raid on Minor’s property.

“I know there can’t be any reason why it happened the way it did, but right after Larry was hit by the FBI search, the team suddenly caught fire,” said McCulloch, 50, who has driven for Minor since 1984. “It didn’t make up for his other problems, but winning does bring a smile to his face.”

Since the Autolite Nationals at Sonoma, Calif., on Aug. 9, Pedregon and McCulloch have been the hottest pair on the Winston drag racing circuit.

Pedregon, 29, has won five consecutive national events in his Oldsmobile Cutlass, equaling a record set in 1976 by Don Prudhomme. He also set the national elapsed-time record of 5.076 seconds at the Keystone Nationals. McCulloch has won three of the last four national events, including his sixth U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis.

“I waited eight years to see my cars win a doubleheader (top fuel and funny car), and then they win three out of four,” Minor said.

His drivers have included Larry Dixon, Gary Beck, Dick LaHaie, Frank Hawley and Shirley Muldowney besides himself and the current pair.

Pedregon and McCulloch scored consecutive victories at Indianapolis, Topeka, Kan., and Dallas.

All Pedregon--in his first year as a professional funny-car driver--needs to do to unseat John Force as the national champion is to win his first-round match Sunday in the season’s final event, the Winston Finals, at the Pomona Fairplex drag strip. The comeback by Pedregon is one of the most remarkable in NHRA history. Force, a two-time champion from Yorba Linda, held a 1,616-point lead only six races ago.

Both Pedregon and McCulloch credit the turnaround to teamwork between the crews headed by Lee Beard on the top-fueler and Larry Meyer on the funny car.

“They got their heads together and decided we needed to make some engine changes to get more reliability,” Pedregon said. “They put together a combination that has been just about unbeatable. We learned some things early in the season, even when we weren’t winning, that we applied to the cars. Most of all, I think, it was the sense of cooperation between the two teams. We’re just like one team, even though we race in different classes.”

McCulloch added: “An important factor is that Beard and Meyer didn’t make any drastic changes when we were losing. They just pecked away at it, sneaking up on the problems a little bit at a time.”

Luck can be a factor, too, as was shown two races ago at Dallas, both Pedregon and Force had problems. But Force’s were worse.

“We were in the finals on an all-cement track and both of us wanted a win and earn the 200 bonus points that you get for a national record,” Pedregon said. “The air cooled off and we both went a little over center on the nitro. We smoked our tires right off the line and I thought it was all over. I was only going about 80 m.p.h. when I saw Force in trouble, too. We both tried to get going and he banged into the wall twice and we ended up winning.”

Pedregon’s winning time was 7.760 seconds, which would be slow even by pro stock standards. Earlier in the day, Force had had a run of 5.079, third-fastest ever for a funny car.

McCulloch, who began racing dragsters in 1958--five years before Pedregon was born--has been a stabilizing influence on his young teammate.

“Every driver out there, the younger ones especially, needs someone to turn to when questions come up, and I’ve been fortunate to be able to work closely with Ed,” Pedregon said. “If I feel some need for mental preparation, Ed is always there to talk with and no one knows the business any better than he does.”

McCulloch has raced 23 years on the NHRA circuit without winning a national championship, so he finds it remarkable that Pedregon is on the verge of winning in his second season--his first in funny cars. The two switched machines at the start of the 1992 season, McCulloch moving from Minor’s funny car to top fuel and Pedregon going the other way.

“Cruz had experience in alcohol funny cars, so it wasn’t entirely new to him, but with the new sponsor we have (McDonald’s) it put a tremendous amount of pressure on him to produce,” McCulloch said. “We knew we were expected to win, and to handle that kind of pressure in his first season shows what a remarkable young man Cruz is, as well as a driver.”

Although this is Pedregon’s first year in a nitro-burning funny car, he drove four years in a top-alcohol dragster and alcohol funny car. Among his four sportsman victories were two at Pomona--the 1989 Winternationals in a dragster and the 1990 Winternationals in a funny car.

“We’re not going to hold anything back this week, because even though we have a good lead, we want to finish on a high note,” he said. “We’re going to continue going for the throat because we know that’s exactly what John (Force) is still going to do.”

Force’s comments were even more to the point.

“We ain’t dead yet,” he said with his usual hyperbole. “I worked my whole life to get the Winston championship, and I’m not ready to give it up to a kid driving a hamburger stand on wheels. I’ll tell you, as much as I love fast food, I’m getting a little tired of seeing hamburger everywhere I go. That red-and-yellow stealth bomber, that ‘Hamburger from Hell’ I call it, has become my worst nightmare.”

Pedregon is a second-generation driver. His father, known as Flamin’ Frank Pedregon, was a local favorite in the 1960s, especially at the Lions strip in Wilmington. He raced a top-fuel dragster and got his nickname from driving with his tires aflame--a gimmick that lit up the strip before burnouts became popular.

“Dad drove mostly match races against guys like Snake (Prudhomme), Tom McEwen and Ed (McCulloch),” his son said. “I don’t remember much about it because I was too young, but I do remember going to drag races with him all through the ‘70s.”

The elder Pedregon was killed in 1981 in an airplane crash, shortly after Cruz had begun driving.

“We had a family trucking business and one day we got a flyer in the mail from Orange County Raceway announcing the Diesel Truck Drags. Dad had 25 rigs on the lot, so I got a restored ’53 Kenworth and took it to Orange County. It was a bracket race--the first time I’d ever been in one--and I won. When I got home about midnight with a six-foot trophy, a check for $1,000 and a bunch of other stuff, my dad said, ‘You need to go to the race track now.’

“We fixed up a Peterbilt (truck) that would do a 15-second run and I won the last race Dad ever saw driving it. He was killed shortly after that, but I kept racing the diesel for about three years.”

In 1985 he switched to Go-karts, which brought him in contact with Parnelli Jones’ sons, P.J. and Page. Pedregon won the Ventura Raceway championship in 1986.

Long before the diesel truck races, the Go-karts, or racing with the Jones boys, Cruz had an unusual experience behind the steering wheel.

“I was 9 and one morning I went with my dad to downtown Los Angeles to pick up a load in one of his produce trucks. I sat in the truck while Dad was down on the street doing his business. When the truck needed to be turned around, he waved at me to move it.

“I was all propped up with pillows so I could see and I was doing just fine when a police officer happened to pass by and looked up at me. Well, you can imagine when happened next. I got my first ticket, and my dad got one, too. For a hundred bucks.”