- Top-seeded Ron Capps aware that his 24-point lead over closest NHRA Funny Car challenger Matt Hagan isn’t secure.
- Non-Countdown-qualified drivers can be the trickiest to get by, Capps says.
- Toyota Supra driver is also all for an “unplug/throwback” weekend.
Ron Capps, the NHRA Funny Car’s No. 1 seed in the Countdown to the Championship, knows what he’s talking about when he says this weekend’s Pep Boys Nationals means “it’s time to focus.”
As he eyed Friday’s start of the six-race playoff at Maple Grove Raceway, near Reading, Pa., Capps said, “You could have not a bad race but you could have an ‘okay’ race and drop three or four spots (in the standings).”
He has a vulnerable 24-point lead over fellow three-time series champion Matt Hagan. And he recognizes the performance pendulum can swing in either direction. In his first two championship runs, Capps also entered the Countdown as the points leader. Last year he spoiled Robert Hight’s dream of a fourth title.
However, Capps has been ambushed, as well. In the inaugural Countdown, in 2007, he won the so-called regular season but yielded the championship to No. 3-ranked Tony Pedregon, despite winning twice in three Countdown finals and winning one-third of the year’s Funny Car trophies (8 of 24). Five years later, Capps led the Funny Car field into the Countdown and lost out to Jack Beckman after topping the leaderboard for the first three playoff events. (Ironically, he lost that lead at Reading, when it was Race No. 4 in the Countdown.) And that was in a season in which he won an enviable five times in eight final rounds.
Watching U.S. Nationals Top Fuel winner Antron Brown struggle just to qualify at Indianapolis made an impression on Capps, who said, “You [can have] the biggest budget in the world but it doesn’t matter—you may not qualify.”
And then comes race day, with its own pitfalls.
The NAPA Auto Parts Toyota Supra driver said, “I’ve always said one of the most important cars that’s going to be tough to beat is the car that’s not in the Countdown – or, when we leave Maple Grove, it’s going to be (No.) 8, 9, 10, 11, whatever. (They) have nothing to lose. As a kid, I cheered for those teams. If they’re smart and they just go down the racetrack, you never know [what might happen], especially at track like Reading. There’s no going down [the 1,000-foot course] easy on that track. You either go out there and step on everybody’s necks and throw down as a team that wants to be top or you go out and shake the tires.”
Moreover, Capps said, “There’s a fine line in the weather we’re going to see and conditions we’re going to see. We’re going to see some sun. We’re going to see some heat Saturday and Sunday. Friday is probably the most throwdown (opportunity) we’ve seen at any track in awhile, even with the sun on that racetrack. You’re going to see different conditions. You get a little bit of cloud cover, you could see some crazy runs, even during the heat [of the day).”
Capps, the 2017 Maple Grove winner and 76-time winner in all, owns both ends of the Maple Grove Raceway Funny Car track records with a 2019 elapsed time of 3.837 seconds and speed from that same year of 339.28 mph. That 2019 speed is the fastest at Maple Grove across all classes and is the second-fastest run in NHRA history.
He isn’t likely to rest on his accomplishments, which include winning back-to-back championships and scoring back-to-back victories to end the regular season (counting a second consecutive U.S. Nationals triumph).
“If you’re a guy on our team and you’re maybe living off last weekend, you’re going to get slapped around and you’re going to be reminded that ‘Hey—we have business to do.’ And I’m one of them.”
He did allow himself one fantasy. “I always thought we needed a race where we disconnect the computers and just go old-school, where [the crew chief] relies on me and we communicate like they did in the ’70s. That would be so much fun as a team, because we gel as a team. That would be the ultimate throwback weekend. But we’ve got to keep our feet on their necks.”
So clearly, he is concentrating on the stout agenda in front of him.
“We set certain goals throughout the season, one being to win the regular-season championship and another to have a good outing in Indy, and it all came together like we had planned. So, we feel really good that all of our hard work paid off. But, we celebrated and now we’ve put it behind us and we’re focused on what’s coming up—the six-race playoffs against some of the best Funny Car teams in our sport’s history,” Capps said.
“Every year has felt tougher and tougher. The class is so tough right now. So many teams are running well, and I don’t want to disrespect any team by not mentioning them, because pretty much the whole class is capable of winning on any given Sunday,” he said. “Whoever wins the championship this year definitely will have earned it.”
Contributing Editor
Susan Wade has lived in the Seattle area for 40 years, but motorsports is in the Indianapolis native’s DNA. She has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with nearly 30 seasons at the racetrack, focusing on the human-interest angle. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, and Seattle Times. She has contributed to Autoweek as a freelance writer since 2016.
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