Not much has gone wrong for Ron Capps for over a month, and that trend continued Friday at the K&N Filters Route 66 NHRA Nationals.

Capps, who pilots the Don Schumacher Racing NAPA Dodge, drove to the provisional No. 1 qualifying spot with a track record elapsed time of 3.888 seconds at 328.78 mph at Route 66 Raceway.

“I’m loving this right now, it’s so much fun,” said the veteran Capps. “I’m so proud of (crew chief) Rahn Tobler and what we have done. When we left Topeka (Kan.) (May 22) and a lot of teammates and some of these other cars were about two or three hundredths ahead of us. We qualified with an 89 there and it was close. Tobler worked so hard in between races to give me a great car and we showed that in New Hampshire and from then it has been so much fun to drive.”

After losing in the first round to Robert Hight at Topeka, Capps has been on a tear. He won at Epping and Englishtown, N.J., lost in the semifinals at Bristol, Tenn., and then won the last event at Norwalk, Ohio, to move into first place in the point standings.

During that four-race stretch, Capps also qualified No. 1 at Epping, Englishtown and Bristol.

“To do what we’ve done with No. 1 qualifiers and win three out of those four races is just so above and beyond,” Capps said. “There are too many good teams, and it aint going to last, but as long as we’re one of the top cars and we can just keep doing what we are doing, we can have fun until the end of the year. All its doing is making these other crew chiefs go back to the drawing board and that’s what made Rahn Tobler go back to the drawing board in Topeka. It’s fun right now in Funny Car and it’s great to run like we’re running, and we will keep trying to chug away at it.”

According to data, 29 out of the last 34 runs Capps has made have been sub four seconds.

“That gives me confidence,” Capps said.

Capps said there are rumors floating around about possible rule changes being made to the Funny Car class, which doesn’t thrill him.

“The rumor going around right now is some teams have complained about these swept-back headers and these last few races some drivers had issues with the front end coming up and a couple of the drivers and teams had complained and crew chiefs on other teams had complained that I guess it was getting unsafe. Of course this happens when I happen to be running good, so I’m a little upset about it, but I’m disappointed talking to NHRA and hearing who complained, that bummed me out. You have to go back to St. Louis last year where I hit about everything I could hit with this Funny Car and then almost ran over somebody at the top end trying to get off the track. It's become a fun class because it put the driver back in the Funny Car. They’re not slot cars, and they were slot cars for a while. This is fun right now because it is so on the edge. It’s why people want to watch Pro Mods because you don’t know if they are going to make it to the finish line, but Funny Car right now is so much fun because you don’t know what is going to happen as a driver, even with your own car. I love the technology and what everybody is doing and love that were running good. Tobler went to work very hard in the offseason and made this car much more drivable for me and that’s the only reason I’m getting to the finish line and keeping it in the groove. We had this car last year, I just couldn’t control it, so it has been a very big team effort.”

Capps is unsure what changes NHRA might make if any to the Funny Car class, but he isn’t losing sleep over anything right now.

“I’m disappointed on who it is because we weren’t complaining when some of these teams were running and winning races in the Countdown last year,” Capps said. “These teams, some of them which are complaining now, were running pretty good and all we did was work harder to get there. Whatever happens with NHRA, whether they put a moratorium on headers and put them back to where they used to be, it doesn’t matter, we’re going to work just as hard. It’s just unfortunate because I really feel like right now for the first time in a long, long time since Jimmy Prock put those headers on last year and sent everybody back to the drawing board in the middle of the summer, drivers are back in it and it’s not a slot car, and that makes me happy. This is the most fun I’ve ever had in my 19 years of driving a Funny Car.”

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