It was only a matter of time before two of the most iconic modern-day Funny Car tributes came together to dance on the big stage. And the NHRA couldn’t have asked for a better nostalgic scenario to close its 75th anniversary season.
Paul Lee brought his 1976 Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen tribute Funny Car to Pomona, while Ron Capps happened to have a Don “The Snake” Prudhomme tribute body in his hauler. Until this week, the chances of those two cars racing each other were practically nonexistent.
Then Capps blew up his primary body at the Texas NHRA FallNationals, forcing his team to bring out another spare. That spare happened to be the Prudhomme tribute, which remained in the team’s hauler for the trip west.
Saturday, Capps and Lee will line up in the first pair of the third Funny Car qualifying session at the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals. Prudhomme will be there, too, preparing to accept McEwen’s NHRA Legends tribute later in the day.
“I mean, Mongoose would just be ecstatic and I just think it’s so cool that it lined up this way,” Capps said. “Unfortunately, we hurt a body in Dallas. Fortunately, we’d known the guys chose that to be our second backup body going west and it’s like the stars lined up.”
Lee had announced Wednesday that his McEwen tribute would make one final appearance, giving West Coast fans an opportunity to see the car he debuted at Indianapolis. Once he learned Capps still had the Prudhomme body, he contacted Capps and crew chief Guido Antonelli about putting the cars together.
“So I texted Guido and Ron and they said they’d get back to me because they have to check with NAPA corporate,” Lee said. “And then this morning, they said we got the okay.”
Capps contacted Katherine Wooten, the Director of Partnership Strategy and Activation for NAPA Auto Parts, who had previously approved his Hot Wheels and Army tribute cars. She agreed to the request, although getting the sponsor’s permission was only part of the process.
NHRA determines qualifying pairings based on the established procedure, leaving the drivers without the authority to choose their opponents. Lee contacted NHRA’s Josh Peterson to see whether an exception could be made for Saturday’s third qualifying session.
“We then contacted Josh Peterson at NHRA and we said, ‘Hey, we’d like to race Snake versus Mongoose in Q3 before Mongoose gets his ring,'” Lee said. “Josh, I guess he said he’d get back to us and he did whatever he needed to do and got back to us and said, ‘Yeah. We’re on for Q3 tomorrow, first pair.'”
Lee’s connection to the Mongoose tribute goes back to 1976, when he was 16 and carrying a camera at the NHRA Summernationals in Englishtown, N.J. He photographed Prudhomme and McEwen racing that weekend, never imagining he’d be driving one of those cars’ tributes against the other 50 years later.
Lee was 16 when he photographed Prudhomme and McEwen racing each other in 1976. That photograph became the inspiration for the particular Mongoose paint scheme he chose to reproduce 50 years later.
“The other cool thing is the picture that you see on the internet when you type in Mongoose versus Snake in 1976 is the picture from the summer nationals and Paul Lee took that when he was 16 years old,” Capps said. “So these cars ran each other 50 years ago and battled all season long and it’s going to be pretty cool to line them up next to each other, one of the more famous racetracks we have on the circuit. And the fans, they’re going to love it.”
Lee could have chosen one of McEwen’s more recognizable Hot Wheels paint schemes, but he wanted the version he remembered from Englishtown. The car made its debut at Indianapolis earlier this season, and Lee wanted to bring it to Pomona before retiring the tribute.
Capps has already enjoyed his own experience with Prudhomme’s racing history. In 2023, he drove a Hot Wheels tribute Funny Car to victory at the NHRA U.S. Nationals, with Prudhomme there to celebrate the occasion.
Capps first got the idea of bringing the cars together during testing at Pomona, when he saw Lee’s Mongoose car sitting outside the trailer. At that point, Capps wasn’t thinking about racing him; he just wanted a picture of the two tribute cars together.
“And then we looked over at Paul Lee’s and he had pushed his car out of his trailer to make their run, but they weren’t running that car, but they pushed it out and it was like, ‘Man, it’d be cool just to go line these two things up for a picture, right?'” Capps said.
Prudhomme and McEwen were already big names in drag racing, but when when Mattel put their Funny Cars into the Hot Wheels lineup – their images exploded. For a lot of kids in the 1970s, their first Snake versus Mongoose race happened on the living room floor.
McEwen died in 2018, but Prudhomme will be at Pomona Saturday to accept his friendly rival’s NHRA Legends honor. Before that ceremony, he’ll get to watch the momentous meeting of the tributes.
Capps said he planned to call Prudhomme and tell him to get to the track early. The Snake wasn’t about to miss this one if Capps had anything to say about it.
Lee admits he still hears his old friend McEwen whispering in his ear.
Asked what McEwen would tell him before lining up against the Snake, he didn’t hesitate.
“He would say, ‘Make sure you beat The Snake.'”
