CAPPS COLLECTS FIRST WIN WITH NEW TEAM, DOMINATES AT TRICKY WINTERNATIONALS
It is the kind of race where legends are made.
And it is the kind of race people will talk about for ages.
Let’s set the stage. A difficult racing surface combined with brutal weather conditions? Check. Head-to-head matchups between future Hall of Famers? Check. A unique twist that makes the race standout more than most? Check.
One day after boasting about what a win this weekend would mean, Ron Capps turned in a performance for the ages. On Sunday, the driver of the Napa Auto Parts Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Funny Car put together a dominant showing on a tricky racetrack to collect a memorable win at the mid-summer edition of the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals presented by ProtectTheHarvest.com at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona.
“This is still hard to believe, especially here at what I consider hallowed ground in the sport of drag racing,” Capps said. “To win at Pomona at a special Covid race and take home a win at the Summernationals and have it say Winternationals on the trophy, it is an amazing thing. I’ve been saying a win is coming and I started to wonder if I shouldn’t say that and jinx our team, but we have just been running so well and eating up those Camping World points. Today was big.
“To take out the points leader and to have that big matchup with John Force in the semifinals, which is always big at Pomona, was huge. And to do it camping here at the track in our RV with all of our friends and family, right now this just feels really good. I’m really happy for Guido (Dean Antonelli) and John Medlen and our whole Napa Auto Care team. Time and time again they gave me a good racecar and I certainly didn’t want to be the weak link. This is just an unbelievable win.”
Facing a brutal combination of high heat and a challenging racing surface, Sunday proved difficult for all of the competitors in the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series. The nitro racers were especially susceptible to the conditions and it showed on the track, with nearly every team watching helplessly as their 11,000-horsepower race machines limped to the finish line gasping for air.
And that included Capps. After placing his race machine No. 1 on Saturday with one of the few full pulls of the weekend, Capps drove through smoking tires and dropped cylinders to collect his first win of the season and the 67th of his career.
Capps defeated J.R. Todd in Sunday’s Funny Car final in another imperfect race typical of the day. Capps got away cleanly in the final round matchup, but his machine started dropping cylinders and began pushing toward the wall before he lifted. Todd had the better reaction time and was chasing down his final round opponent, but he too began losing cylinders and was forced to lift. Capps crossed the stripe with a 4.151-second pass at 297.75 mph to collect the win in one of the slower victories of his recent career. Todd followed him across the line with a 4.289 at 286.56 mph in earning the runner-up spot.
“That was probably the most extreme conditions I have driven in a Funny Car. And it was probably the most fun car to drive,” Capps said. “Every run you would go up there and everybody is tearing their hair out trying to get down the track. We had weird stuff with cylinders going out in certain spots and we were leaving it alone because it was running like a bracket car. Most of the time you would be concerned about that, but we’ve got such a nice tuneup you could put a cylinder out and get through that rough spot. It sounds so bad from half track on that you start to duck, but then they tell you it runs 4.15 which is incredible. We were quietly going about ourselves each run.”
The day as a whole, while difficult, was not completely foreign to Capps. He recalls similar races earlier in his career where it required atypical answers to solve the riddle of the day.
“My first win in Funny Car was in St. Louis with Roland Leong as our crew chief and he was putting cylinders out on purpose. It was the hottest race and he was putting them out on purpose and he won the race that way,” Capps said. “This race really reminded me of that as we were going along. I didn’t want to say anything, I didn’t want Guido to fix it and try to go faster. I just wanted to go cylinders out, driving it until we saw sparks.”
All four of Capps’ runs fell in the four-second zone on Sunday, as he began the day with a couple of close wins over Bobby Bode and points leader Bob Tasca. He had the low elapsed time of both rounds, recording a 4.020 and a 4.151 respectively, with his 4.020 at 309.77 mph in round one proving the best pass of the entire day in the Funny Car category.
In the semifinals, Capps squared off against fellow drag racing legend John Force in a showdown for the ages. Force drove his Peak Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car in deep, turning off the pre-stage bulbs on the tree, but it would prove fruitless as he began to spin the tires at the hit and immediately began dropping cylinders.
Capps beat his opponent to the line with a 4.158 at 300.06 mph, while Force coasted home with a 4.659 at 195.19 mph.
“I was laughing in my helmet when he (drove in deep). First of all, he always stages last, but I made him go in first,” Capps said. “I was like, ‘We are in Pomona, John Force is pulling the top light off on me and we are just getting it on.’ It was just so much fun.”
Todd reached his third final round of the year with wins over Jeff Diehl, Robert Hight and Jim Campbell.
Of course, the biggest storyline coming out of Sunday’s race was the first win for Capps with his new team. After his former crew chief Rahn Tobler retired earlier this year, tuning duties fell to decorated co-crew chiefs and longtime Don Schumacher Racing team members Dean “Guido” Antonelli and John Medlen. In their 10 races together, the new team has qualified first in half of the races, but had not won a race together. That all changed on Sunday.
“You get in this comfort zone like I had with Rahn Tobler, but things just happen for a reason sometimes,” Capps said. “Getting put together with this team was pretty incredible. We have been longtime friends with Guido, but we have never worked together. I have already worked with John Medlen and I know how he operates and he is light years ahead of a lot of people with these great ideas throughout the DSR shop. It is great to have them in our lounge.”
With the win, Capps puts himself right in the thick of the Funny Car championship picture, with less than 100 points separating nearly the entire Countdown to the Championship field with only three races remaining until the postseason.
“We aren’t comfortable at all. If you have a couple of bad races, you are going to drop like a rock,” Capps said. “We are just going to keep up what we are doing. We are going to see some really good teams who may not even make the top 10. But we aren’t worrying about that, our focus is on Topeka next.”