Ron Capps made the improbable possible on the final day – Nov. 13 – of the 2022 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series season by winning his second world championship in a row – and first as a team owner.

Capps arrived at the Auto Club NHRA Finals at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, Calif. trailing points leader Robert Hight by 61 points.

Thanks to Capps advancing to the final round and Hight being upset by Bob Tasca III in the second round, Capps won the world title by a mere three points.

“The Countdown was crazy, it really was.” said Capps, who has now won world nitro FC crowns in 2016, 2021-22. “You think about the Funny Cars that had a chance (to win the world championship). I feel so bad for Robert Hight, he such a great champion and that whole team to win eight races and who would have thought somebody would have won five races. But eight races and not win a championship is crazy. It just tells you the amount of competition (there is).

“To be be able to battle back and I talked about it Friday and to come in Saturday and be over that threshold of two rounds was crazy as well. For our guys to bounce back, I didn’t have a care in the world. I knew or I hoped anyway that we would get down the track (Saturday). You talk about a roller-coaster of emotions from not getting any points and losing them and (Matt) Hagan going around us for second place (in the points). Then waking up Saturday morning and Guido (Dean ‘Guido’ Antonelli, Capps' crew chief) everything was going to be all right. He knew what was wrong and I went straight down the track, and we threw down low ET and getting all the points two rounds was huge. That’s the goal we had.”

Capps took his NAPA AUTO PARTS Toyota GR Supra on a blistering 3.837-second ride at a track record speed of 337.33-mph during the final qualifying session on Saturday night to cut Hight’s lead to 57 points and kept his momentum going Sunday.

Capps defeated Jeff Arend, Tim Wilkerson and Tasca III before falling to Cruz Pedregon in the final round.

In the high stakes run against Tasca, Capps clocked a 3.865-second run at 334.65 mph to edge Tasca’s 3.905-second lap at 327.11 mph. Tasca beat Capps in the second round in Las Vegas on Oct. 30, the previous event before Pomona.

Although Capps lost to Pedregon he made a penalty-free run, and it secured his third world title. Capps became the first NHRA nitro Funny Car driver to win back-to-back world championships since John Force won 10 consecutive world titles from 1993-2002.

“It is unfortunate because the final round Guido wanted to run a little quicker than our qualifying, he was trying to run 81 which would have been phenomenal,” Capps said. “I poked it in a little bit and the plan was if anything went wrong shut it off. Because we could have lost a world championship had it gone down there and crossed over the centerline before the 1320. NHRA, I think, is going to change that rule but it was very emotional to fire the car up. I thought I am going to do a long burnout because I don’t get to do long burnouts anymore. So, I did a long burnout and T-Buck, the guy who backs, he’s running, his hat flew off. I even talked to my buddy Del Worsham. I wanted to get an opinion from someone who drives, and I really love his opinion and he said run it down there and if anything feels weird shut it off at halftrack.”

Capps wasn’t sure he wanted to follow that plan.

“I thought how cool it would be to throw down that number, win the race and have the championship. In a Funny Car, I have got to drive a lot of cool cars in the world USAC Midgets, World of Outlaws Sprint Cars, and there is nothing on planet Earth like a nitro Funny Car. It has a mind of its own and it can make you look foolish. Look what John Force fought the last few years. That’s the best guy who has ever strapped on a pair of Funny Car boots. You never know. 

“I didn’t want to go down and be the biggest idiot on planet Earth and have it go down and cross the centerline and lose a world championship and be that close. So, it was tough. And it left the starting line, and we checked the tech and we said, ‘Okay, if I cross the center line, you get an infraction.’ But I asked, ‘What about the wall?’ He said, ‘No, it's fine.’ I went down there and I kind of made a move and I just went over by the wall, and I just said, ‘I'm going to go until I see sparks.’ I didn't see Cruz, didn't see Cruz. I just saw him out of the corner of my eye at the very finish line. But it got a little closer probably than I wanted. But I think the fans deserved it. That could have been the dumbest thing ever, but I'm glad we did that. And Guido said, ‘Look, you're a professional. Run it down there.’ And he's obviously never driven a Funny Car, so he doesn't understand what goes on in those things but can't thank NAPA and Toyota and to win a championship for all our sponsors the first year as a team owner is insane.”

It was a season – 2022 – that Capps will never forget. As the boss of Ron Capps Motorsports in its inaugural year after he departed Don Schumacher Racing in the offseason – Capps won five races, collected three runner-up finishes and six No. 1 qualifying berths.

Among Capps’ other season highlights were his big win at the Indianapolis race where he was No. 1 qualifier, won the Pep Boys All-Star Call Out specialty race before powering his NAPA Supra to victory to win his first U.S. Nationals trophy in more than 25 attempts. Capps then went on to score a pair of Countdown victories in Charlotte and Dallas, Texas, which helped to place him solidly into the championship hunt heading into the final two races of the season, and set up an epic three-way battle between Capps, Hight, and Hagan.

Consistency was the key for Capps as he and the NAPA team never dropped below third on the Funny Car leaderboard throughout the season.

Capps finished 2022 with a 46-17 elimination round record. Capps is who’s just the seventh Funny Car driver to win as many as three titles. 

“It hasn't even sunk in,” Capps said. “A phone call from Don Prudhomme... He's called me every day and checked on me. He was checking on me after Friday. The amount of people I've had around us... I said my interview with Amanda that we didn't deserve it. And I wake up that way and my wife and I wake up that way this year and we wake up and I get in the car and drive it like we don't deserve it. We've had so many good people around us that do so many things that have made this easy. I've leaned on some great people. Don Schumacher has been unbelievable. Wilkerson and Force and all these people that I race against for our livelihood have checked on me and made sure that there's any way they could help me, which has been very cool.

“I just didn't think this was going to happen. To win it and then go as a team owner as the No. 1 car, and to come in here, having to beat that AAA car, who has phenomenal success here at this track. I mean, to go out there, and... It hasn't even sunk in. So many people believed in us at the top at the headquarters in NAPA. I'm not sure that... It's still crazy to me. I mean, they didn't know what I was going to do. It blows my mind.”

Capps acknowledged his transition to team owner took plenty of support.

“Paul Doleshal, Toyota, for them to jump on board... Nobody knew if I was going to go half the year and forget how to do things,” Capps said. “For them to stick on board with us and just the year has been phenomenal. I keep leaning on Guido and we just keep having... To win five races was crazy as a new team owner. I told Guido before the final run. I go, ‘Dude, it's you and me. Two kids.’ We both grew up crew guys, and when I met him, he was at John Force's. I go, ‘We're going to win a world championship together our first year.’ And we feel like two kids out playing marbles in the field. I mean it's just, it's phenomenal. We can go have fun and do this and it's crazy. It's going to sink in pretty quick here and I got to write a speech. Oh my God, everyone's going to be looking forward to that.”

Crunching the numbers is something that Capps didn’t want to do, and he was glad things worked out in his favor.

“We won by three, I believe,” Capps said. “And that would've cost us 10, had I gone down across the center line. So that's why they couldn't crown me, or our team world champions after the semifinal loss. Technically, mathematically we were, but there was that hanging out there that if I went down there and crossed the centerline between 1000-foot and a quarter mile, it would've deducted 10 points and I would've lost it by seven.

“Well, I'm not even sure my brain's mush right now. But the point is, that run we made, I said it was an E-ticket ride because I was just hanging onto it. I went 3.83, at 337 (mph) on Saturday night. So, that was part of the equation. Like Guido said, ‘Well, you're comfortable.’ I said, ‘No, I step on the gas. I don't know, it feels like it could go wherever.’ I mean, it's scary in these Funny Cars. So that fed into, what are you going to do? You going to shut it off? You going to run it down there? And so yeah, it was another E-ticket, and I probably shouldn't have been over next to the wall. A lot of things I probably shouldn't have done.”

Capps now had three titles and has experienced the highs and lows in the sport losing the 2012 NHRA nitro Funny Car world championship by two points to Jack Beckman.

“What stands out to me is the one year, I think we lost it by two, and I was OK,” Capps said. “I was bad, down at the other end, but my daughter, Taylor, was like 12 years old back then, and she started consoling me. She was the stronger one and then I lost it. So yeah, a lot of those moments down there I think made me better at being ready for what happened today, I guess. There's no retribution or anything. It's just to have a chance to come in and have even a shot at the championship, let alone the drama that unfolded today, to be part of that. And yeah, it's just... can't even imagine.

“I'm sitting in the car every session and you're strapped in, and you know what's going... How big this moment is, and you're trying to enjoy it, and then you got to tell yourself, stop it. You can't enjoy it right now. You got to focus. And then you're like, oh my God, this is it against Tasca. I'm like, this is it. This is for everything that I've dreamt about all... And then you go up there and you're like, no, no, no. It's just another round. Just another round. But it's not. So, you have those thoughts in your head too.”

While the NAPA team’s season-long battle for the crown culminated in the ultimate prize on Sunday, the day had a slight bittersweet feel to it, as it marked the end of co-crew chief John Medlen’s time on the NHRA tour.
 
“To send Medlen off and to send one of these (Wallys) to his cabin in Georgia, it's going to be phenomenal,” Capps said. “He means so much to us.”