When Ron Capps clocked a 339.28 mph lap in the second session of qualifying Sept. 13 at the Mopar Express Lane NHRA Nationals Presented By Pennzoil at Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pa., the NHRA tech department took notice.

NHRA reached out to its Top Fuel and Funny Car teams Sept. 19 with a letter informing them about possible rule changes. One of the mechanical changes the NHRA tech department is considering is a spec standard inlet for all superchargers. Reportedly, the spec inlet has been tested and is ready to be implemented at any given moment.

NHRA also said that additional rules may be updated prior to the start of the 2020 season, but these have not yet been confirmed.

Mike Green, a world championship Top Fuel crew chief with Tony Schumacher, who now tunes the Austin Prock-driven Top Fuel Dragster at John Force Racing, offered his thoughts about possible mechanical changes being considered.

“They made it perfectly clear that the blower (inlet shoe) is their first choice and I wouldn’t consider that the right thing to do,” Green said. “I personally think that a smaller, shorter stroke engine, a short stroke crankshaft, which would make the engine smaller and would make the crank stronger and would make the rods stronger and slow the pistons down and make a lot of the parts last longer (would be a better choice).

“It seems like they have gone down this road before and it didn’t go over so well. I don’t know why they think it is going to work now.”

NHRA’s rule tweaking seems aimed at keeping Top Fuel dragsters and nitro Funny Cars from recording 340 mph speeds at the 1,000-foot mark.

Ned Walliser, NHRA’s VP of competition, doesn’t see things that way.

“There’s not a magic number,” Walliser said. “It’s about controlling the escalation of speed and costs. The more we can control costs, the more opportunity we have to gain new competitors in the nitro categories.”

Green doesn’t buy that line of thinking.

“That doesn’t make sense to me and obviously Ned doesn’t run a car,” Green said. “I only heard of one driver testing it at the Indy test. They ran it (the blower inlet shoe) at the test on a Funny Car and determined it was ready to implement. As far as I know, nobody else has ran it.”

Capps’ run was the first 339 mph NHRA pass since a 339.02 was recorded during the 2017 Reading event and was the second-fastest run in NHRA history behind only nitro Funny Car driver Robert Hight’s 339.87 mph lap on July 29, 2017 in Sonoma, Calif. Tony Schumacher holds the Top Fuel mph record at 336.57, which he set on Feb. 23, 2018.

“That run by Capps was kind of a one-off run,” Green said. “He didn’t do it again and the stars all aligned, and conditions were really good for many runs even at Indy and there at (Reading, Pa.). I don’t think everybody is going to do that. It just happened to be really, really great conditions and that car went that fast. I don’t think (Rahn) Tobler (Capps’ crew chief) tried to do that, it just did it. It is a 5-disc clutch. A 5-disc clutch welds really hard and sometimes when they weld, it will really makes the car accelerate to the finish line. Most 6-disc cars don’t do that.”

Green understands why NHRA’s tech department is monitoring mph in nitro Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters.

“They have been watching it and we all have been watching it and we don’t want the cars to go that fast,” Green said. “The (cars) have kind of just settled in where they were, so (Capps’ run) was like Wow! What happened there? Because nobody has been able to do that. That was a big, weird one-off run. They (NHRA) saw it happen, but I just don’t think the way they think to do it is the right way to do it. We put this blower shoe in there and the first thing you’re going to do is raise the compression and raise the timing and do all this stuff and you’re going to have a whole complete, new tune-up. It is going to cost a lot of attrition to figure it out and the teams that can test and teams with a lot of money are going to figure it out way faster than the teams that can’t. I think it is going to spread the playing field wider rather than narrower which somehow in their mind, they think it is going to be narrower.”

Jack Beckman, the 2012 nitro Funny Car world champ, who drives for Don Schumacher Racing, also weighed in on NHRA’s possible rule changes to reduce mph. Beckman was the runner-up at the recent U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis and won at Reading, Pa., Sept. 15.

“My standpoint is 335s are the best speed in Funny Car all year and one has exceeded it and it exceeded it by a bunch,” Beckman said. “Let’s wait to see if somebody else can do that again. They might have to do something (in the offseason). Look, crew chiefs keep getting smarter and smarter and they are going to find ways to make these cars run faster, so if you’re going to make a change you probably ought to make it where we all have an equal amount of time to deal with it.”

Matt Hagan, who, like Beckman drives a nitro Funny Car for DSR, knows what he signed up for when he gets in the cockpit. Hagan was NHRA’s nitro Funny Car world champion in 2011 and 2014. 

“I feel 100 percent safe, and I wouldn’t crawl in there if I didn’t,” Hagan said. “I trust my guys. I trust my crew chief. I realize what I’m doing. If I didn’t think something could happen, I have no business being in that car. It’s like a guy riding a bull, if you don’t think it is going to buck, you probably should not be on the bull. I know when I get in a nitro Funny Car, it is going to haul ass. If you start pulling back and you start seeing the same mph over and over and over again and there are no opportunities to break barriers, what is exciting about that? People want to be entertained and we are in the entertainment business. I understand 100 percent why we want to be safe, but at the end of the day we need to give our fans a reason to go out and buy tickets.” 

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