Two hours before unveiling his new baby Friday, Ron Capps had the butterflies of a prospective father pacing in a waiting room.

Nine months, you see, is how long it took for Capps’ desire to become a Toyota-backed racer to putting the manufacturer’s GR Supra body on the track. It became a reality with first-round qualifying at the Circle K NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway.

“I’m nervous,” said Capps, the 2016 and ’21 NHRA Funny Car champ who this season launched his own team. “I’ve driven a long time, but I still just want to make sure I do everything right. I’m excited about getting down the track and (crew chief Dean ‘Guido’ Antonelli) finding the right balance for this body.

“There’s been a lot of man-hours in the wind tunnel developing this body, a lot of man-hours working on this car,” he added. “I run off and do sprint cars and nostalgia Top Fuel and Funny Car, and they’re all different – different brake handles, different seats, all sorts of different stuff – so I’ve had to learn to adapt on the fly, then come back and get in my Funny Car. I hope that experience will help in a car that’s new to me.”

The move to Toyota has its origins to Labor Day weekend 2021 at the U.S. Nationals, which was when Capps informed his then-team owner, Don Schumacher, that he was going to do his own thing this year. That meant entering into deep negotiations with potential sponsors and manufacturers, and Indy was crucial to that, he said.

“Indy’s one of the rare races where you get manufacturers and sponsors that come out that don’t go to a lot of the races,” he said. 

It was during the U.S. Nationals that Capps met with Paul Doleshal, Group Manager, Motorsports for Toyota Motor North America. At that point, Capps wasn’t privy to the information that Toyota was going to switch from its Camry body style to the GR Supra. But what he did know was the importance of being aligned with a manufacturer in a big way – something he learned by watching how major motorsports team owners such as Roger Penske, Rick Hendrick, Chip Ganassi, and Richard Childress, as well as Capps’ first big-time team owner, Don Prudhomme, dealt with those key players.

“The foundation to a team is the manufacturer, and if you do it right, you might get a partner,” Capps said. “So at Indy and after that, we’re in the middle of the (NHRA) Countdown to the Championship, I’m trying to win a championship, a couple of the sponsors we were talking to weren’t sure yet, and it was a tough time.

“Finally, in December, right before I was going to leave the hotel to go to the (Performance Racing Industry) show to make the announcement about starting my team, I got a call. It was Toyota saying, ‘We want to be involved, we want to be a partner – but are you OK with not having the body to start the season off with?’ I said, ‘Absolutely. I’m willing to wait because I don’t want your current teams … the current teams they had deserved to have it first.’”

Those would be drivers J.R. Todd and Alexis DeJoria. And while they had their bodies in time for the season opener at Pomona, California, in mid-February, Capps had to wait – and keep mum. But when Capps’ team left the shop in Brownsburg, Ind., two weeks ago to head to Houston for last weekend’s event, the new body was finished and in the hauler. Its debut at Charlotte was held back for a reason, Capps said.

“Us racing in Charlotte is a big deal,” Capps said, “and this being a four-wide race, we get four qualifying runs, and that’ll help.”

For now, Capps only has the only GR Supra body, though he said the second one will be ready Monday.

And what if something disastrous happens to that brand-new shell this weekend? What’s the back-up plan?

Capps will fall back on a Dodge Charger body. Well, it used to be a Dodge Charger.

“If we have to, we’re ready in case something happens,” Capps said. “It’s not a Dodge. It’s a ‘nothing’ body.”

Antonelli had no trouble figuring out how to tune the car with the new body on it. In Friday's two nitro qualifying rounds, Capps made runs of 3.885 and 3.873 seconds -- third fastest halfway through the qualifying sessions.