Two former teammates had one thing in common with two different outcomes. Their helmets controlled their respective destiny. 

Both Ron Capps and Whit Bazemore experienced incidents where their helmets got out of alignment temporarily breaking their attention and line of sight. Capps won and Bazemore lost.

Two former teammates had one thing in common with two different outcomes. Their helmets controlled their respective destiny. 

Both Ron Capps and Whit Bazemore experienced incidents where their helmets got out of alignment temporarily breaking their attention and line of sight. Capps won and Bazemore lost.

Some teams work better under pressure. For Capps and his crewchief Ed "the Ace" McCulloch, anger is the best medicine.

"It's cool when you are going rounds because you have less time to think," Capps said. "They were buckling me in while we were in the staging lanes and Ace was yelling at us to get up there because they had already run Pro Stock. I wasn't even buckled in right when I came to the line and in fact my neck strap wasn't right.

"When I left the line, it pulled my helmet down and I couldn't see. I thought I was going to lose the round because I didn't have time to fix my neck strap."

Then something happened magical for Capps.

"Somehow my helmet moved and I was able to see," Capps said. "It was the weirdest thing."

Bazemore wasn't so lucky. 

Bazemore has been in drag racing long enough that nothing surprises him anymore. The former Funny Car standout lost to the surprising Joe Hartley in the second round when he encountered temporary blindness.

Blindness?

"It was a tough weekend," Bazemore said. "There's a new way to lose all the time. The car shook and I pedaled it. The car shook and the helmet moved on my head, so essentially I couldn't see. So, I'm taking the helmet home and we're going to get it fixed. I've never had that happen before. It would have been hard to beat him anyway.

The silver lining in the dark cloud was that Bazemore qualified No. 1 for the first time in his short Top Fuel career.