After a seven-and-a-half-hour rain delay Friday at Norwalk, Ohio, that included 30 minutes between the first and second runs in the class’ lone session, Ron Capps surfaced at the top of the Funny Car leaderboard for the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals.

The NAPA Dodge Charger Hellcat driver covered the 1,000-foot Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park track with a 3.888-second elapsed time at 329.34 mph.

Capps is the provisional No. 1 qualifier by just seven-thousandths of a second over Robert Hight, in the AAA Chevy Camaro, who clocked a 3.895-second E.T. Only four-thousandths of a second separates Hight and tentative No. 3 racer Matt Hagan, who had a 3.899-second pass at 327.82 mph.

“That was sure nice, after a long day of waiting and hoping the weather was going to clear, especially with the conditions we saw. I know every crew chief and driver was licking his chops,” Capps said. “So it’s great to finally get a shot to make a qualifying run, although we had three pairs to go after us – wasn’t sure that was going to stand, as good a run as it was.”

Both Capps and his crew chief, Dean “Guido” Antonelli, are keeping an eye on the forecast for Saturday, when two more qualifying sessions will trim the overflow field of 18 to 16 for Sunday’s eliminations. And neither is convinced this Friday-best time will hold up.

Capps said, “If there’s a break in the cloud, it could be even better runs tomorrow. We’ll try to go back up there and see what we can do.”

Antonelli said, “It’s probably not going to parlay into anything, because if the forecast is right for tomorrow, the track’s going to be in the 100-and-teens and [1]20s, maybe hotter. So I think tomorrow really good runs are going to be mid-90s, unless [we have] cloud cover. So I don’t see it rolling into anything other than a test shot run.

“I actually had looked at a few runs, and so it should have run a high-[3.]87 or low [3.]88. So it [Capps’ time] was a little less than we thought. But I had to pee so bad, I told him just to hurry up and get down there [to the finish line],” he said.

However, Capps found himself with more drama than he had bargained for at the top end of the racetrack. Or, as he put it, he had “a little too much excitement at the finish line.

“I hit the parachute button on the wheel, and nothing happened. So I reached over and manually hit it. And by that time, you’re traveling quite a ways,” he said. “Thank God for those NAPA brakes. They got me stopped mere inches before we went in the sand trap.”

The fact that the NAPA Dodge made it to the end of the track without any serious incident Friday left Antonelli a bit emotional. He said he simply was thankful, particularly after what happened in Capps’ most recent pass, in the opening round two weeks ago at Epping, N.H.

The engine detonated, and Antonelli said of the incident, “Didn’t see that coming. We weren’t pressing.” He had a sudden wave of reassurance Friday night: “Just, I guess, that all of us are doing our jobs right and we’re not lost. So it was just a huge sense of relief that it went down there clean.”

He said, “Plus, if you look at the runs – all the night runs since Gainesville, we shook [the tires]. So I made kind of an Austin Coil adjustment that he always preached to us that you had to do if the track was under 90 degrees [in temperature]. And so I did it – thank you, Austin Coil.”

Coil and Antonelli worked together for many years at John Force Racing.

Capps called Friday’s performance “just a great start for Guido, [co-crew chief John Medlen], and the NAPA Auto Care team. Our team has had great performance all year long, and we expect more of the same this weekend. If we had a few lucky breaks here and there, we’d have several Wally trophies by now. But the wins are coming. I’m enjoying myself with this great NAPA AutoCare team.”

If Capps is able to hang onto his lead through Saturday, he’ll have his second No. 1 start of the year and 27th of his career. He led the field at the season-opener at Gainesville, Fla. Capps won this event in 2016 and has been a three-time runner-up (in 2011, 2013, 2014).

As the Camping World Drag Racing Series made its return to Norwalk after a year’s absence, Capps (who was the No. 1 starter in 2019) joined Steve Torrence (Top Fuel), Aaron Stanfield (Pro Stock), and Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle) as tentative No. 1 qualifiers.

“This is one of my favorite parts of the season. I love racing during the summer when there’s a little more heat in the race track, a little bit trickier conditions, and a stretch of races that are one right after the other,” Capps said. “Plus, I love that we’re able to welcome full grandstands of fans back and we’re visiting places that we didn’t get to go last year. Things are very, very exciting in the world of NHRA Drag Racing right now.”

Eliminations will start at 11 a.m. (ET) Sunday. FS1 will televise one and a half hours of qualifying coverage, beginning at 12:30 p.m. (ET), and FOX will televise two hours of finals coverage, beginning at 2 p.m. (ET).