Jon Capps didn’t flinch when asked about the weight he’s carrying into this weekend’s Bakersfield March Meet at Famoso Dragstrip. He knew exactly what the question meant.
“What do you mean?” Capps said with a laugh before answering it himself. “Oh, the target on my back?”
Capps returns to Bakersfield riding an eight-round winning streak at Famoso, having swept the prestigious March Meet and the California Hot Rod Reunion in his nitro campaign. The run has made him the man to beat in one of drag racing’s most tradition-rich venues.
“You know what? I haven’t had that problem before,” Capps said of being the hunted instead of the hunter.
The streak is rare in any nitro category, particularly at a facility where veterans such as Bucky Austin and other established names routinely contend. Capps understands the magnitude, even if he refuses to dwell on it.
“Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s not like… Well, I mean… Shoot. Yeah, I don’t care who it is. It’s impressive,” Capps said.
He insists the bigger story is how close the team came to not completing the sweep last fall. Mechanical attrition nearly ended the run before it began.
“After we won the March Meet, everybody was so kind, and everybody that I’d known for so long and worked with, or driven with or for, were really, really complimentary about what we were able to do,” Capps said. “And coming back into the Hot Rod Heritage race, end of the year, I didn’t expect us to go out there and run as well as we did.”
The car had shown consistency all season, but eliminations at the Reunion tested the team’s depth. “But after the first round of eliminations, we’d hurt the engine, had to replace the block,” Capps said. “And we were down to our last set of cylinder heads.”
The team skipped a qualifying session and entered eliminations with limited data and even fewer spare parts. That reality heightened the tension inside the cockpit.
“And I tell you what? You’ve talked about nervous, I heard every noise in that car,” Capps said. “I had to get out of the throttle and hopefully save the engine for another run if we were so lucky to make it past that round.”
Round by round, the car improved. By the time eliminations reached their later stages, Capps found himself part of a record-setting performance.
“Round after round, it just kept getting… The car getting better in eliminations and broke the national record,” he said. “I mean, are you kidding me?”
Capps said even he didn’t grasp how strong the run was until the time slip was delivered. “[The announcer] kept me strung along a whole little second,” Capps said of the interviewer at the top end. “It seemed like it was 30 minutes, but it was more like three seconds.”
“But I didn’t know it was that good of a run,” he added. “That’s one of the crazy things about a nitro car sometimes is the best runs feel like it was nothing really special.”
Success, however, carries its own consequences. Capps said the atmosphere in the pits shifts as round wins accumulate.
“It’s been away for a long time,” he said. “Even when we were in go-karts, my brother and I both, everybody was more than willing to help us out when we first got there.”
“And then as we started to efficiently kick their ass more and more, they got less and less likely to want to help us out,” he added.
He said the current dynamic is similar. “Everybody’s really nice in the pits for the most part,” Capps said. “But like you’re saying, everybody’s not going to be as quick to lend a helping hand.”
The tone is not bitterness but realism. In a competitive field, information and assistance become guarded once rivals sense a team has found its rhythm.
“I think now they’ve figured out that we got it figured out,” Capps said.
The question now is how to manage expectations heading into another March Meet. Capps said the mental approach is no different than when results were harder to come by.
“Well, a little self-deprecating humor I guess,” Capps said. “So I would think that it would be no different from sucking for the last few years and showing up.”
“If you go into a race and you haven’t won anything in a while, you show up and you still try and smile,” he added. “Even though you know teams get close or whatever it is the reason why you haven’t won, you still haven’t won, right?”
Capps said he has consciously tried to push recent success out of his mind. “The last few days I’ve actually started thinking more and more about the success we’ve had and I’m trying to push that away, and just go about business, and don’t change anything,” he said.
Part of that approach involves racing strategically rather than aggressively. “Man, let’s step it down a bit,” Capps recalled telling his team last season. “We don’t have to go for the throttle every run, you know?”
He said he lifted early in multiple rounds at the March Meet to preserve parts. “Just try and save parts,” Capps said. “Because the car runs so well early in mid-track and we don’t need that last little bit.”
His philosophy is simple. “I just try and race smart and do the best I can and see,” he said. “And hopefully I don’t let the guy down.”
Superstition also plays a role in a driver’s routine, even in nitro racing. Capps admits he has his own rituals.
“Where does it stop?” he said. “There are certain things… certain colored underwear on certain race days, always put your right sock on first. Right shoe on first.”
He laughed when asked about whether his eight-round-win underwear had been washed. “They’re still standing up waiting for me,” Capps said.
Beneath the humor is attention to safety. “I do make sure, that’s one thing I’m pretty particular about is, is rotating through my Nomex because… A lot of guys don’t think about it, but sweat could be a problem if there’s a fire,” he said.
The perspective reflects years in high-horsepower machinery. Capps and his brother grew up immersed in racing, and the opportunity to compete at marquee events remains meaningful.
“It’s been amazing,” Capps said. “Everybody on this team has real jobs, and they have to take time off to go to these races.”
He acknowledged the financial and logistical limitations that prevent a full championship pursuit. “We don’t have the ability to take the time, or mainly the money to have the time to go after a championship, unfortunately,” Capps said.
Still, the competitive fire remains. “I’m still working on trying to get some stuff to go race at the big show,” he said. “It’s a matter trying to make schedules work, trying to make the money work.”
For now, Capps heads back to Famoso with a streak intact and expectations rising. He declined the idea of posing with a broom to commemorate last year’s sweep, viewing it as bad mojo.
“Yeah. It definitely is because that always comes back and bites you in the ass,” Capps said of tempting fate. “I try to stay the same person, positive or negative.”
