Racing “the most unpredictable race car in the world” to a second consecutive championship was a goal that now-three-time NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series Funny Car titleholder Ron Capps couldn’t imagine a year ago.
Becoming the first two-time-consecutive Funny Car champ in the last 20 years, and vanquishing John Force Racing’s Robert Hight was a vision Capps had in the back of his head, but knowing how tough Hight, tuners Jimmy Prock and Chris Cunningham were at their “home” track of Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, Capps and co-crew chiefs Dean “Guido” Antonelli and John Medlen kept their focus where it mattered. Which was getting the car working properly in the season finale and making their ways through a few ancillary problems that had little to do with what happens on a race track.
He also had to consider the record of Matt Hagan, his former Don Schumacher Racing teammate who was now driving with Tony Stewart Racing in a Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, the same car Capps drove to his first two titles. Hagan has always been tough to beat anywhere, but especially in Pomona. Even with points-and-a-half on offer for this Auto Club NHRA Finals, those two competitors would be tough to beat.
Capps, who raced with Schumacher’s enterprise for 17 years, started his Ron Capps Motorsports team as Schumacher shuttered his, for all NHRA pro nitro-driven competition other than with his son, Tony Schumacher’s Top Fuel team in 2022, which he later ceded to Maynard Family Racing.
After earning his second title and first in five years, Capps was left to devise, promote and endow a new squad with equipment, sponsorship and a backing manufacturer. He’d worked with Dodge for the length of his time with Schumacher’s team, but they were tied to Tony Stewart Racing, three-time Funny Car champ Matt Hagan and Stewart’s wife Leah Pruett in Top Fuel. They also had an agreement with two-time champ at season finale victor Cruz Pedregon.
Enter Toyota Racing Development (TRD), Toyota Motor Sales, the new Toyota GR Supra and Slugger Labbe, who had journeyed from NASCAR maven to figure out what made NHRA tick, just a couple of years earlier. Toyota embraced Capps and his new team, just as it had with three-time Top Fuel champ Antron Brown when he started his team, one that also began competing in 2022.
Capps won his first race at the Las Vegas Four-Wide contest, but wasn’t officially affiliated with Toyota at that point. Their announcement came at Charlotte’s four-wide race and, shortly thereafter, Capps responded with his second race win in Bristol, first for the Toyota GR Supra. Capps had relied on the setup work done by J.R. Todd and Alexis DeJoria, who came to the Toyota party well before he did; yet he was the sole driver to take Toyota to the Winner’s Circle in 2022 competition.
Ron Capps Motorsports’ third win of the year came at the regular-season closer at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, when both he and Brown went to the Winner’s Circle. Add two more in the six-race Countdown to the Championship, at Charlotte’s zMAX Dragway and a second consecutive win in Dallas’ Stampede of Speed Texas NHRA FallNationals, and Capps was only 61 points behind Hight, with Hagan shadowing him coming into this all-important race.
After having issues on Friday on the Auto Club Raceway drag strip and not collecting any “little” points, Capps and his team rebounded in the final qualifying session of the year, setting both the speed and time track records in the process with the final pass of the evening. That last qualifying run changed everything and had the team looking forward to Sunday eliminations.
“You know, just being an historian and growing up in the sport of drag racing, knowing what we did, really knowing how impressive it was in the competitive nature of today’s world of NHRA Funny Car competition,” Capps said, “to do it with a brand new body with the Toyota GR Supra is an amazing thing.” Their partnership announced at the Charlotte four-wide race, “We hit the ground running with the tremendous amount of help from Slugger, obviously. And then with the current teammates we have, with the DHL team (of Todd), Alexis and Del [Worsham].”
It was a huge task and one that Capps, wife Shelley and the entire team embraced. They never gave up. When Schumacher closed his shops, Capps had no primary sponsor for his new endeavor, but longtime partner NAPA stepped up, as did Gearwrench and a host of others who believed he could handle the pressures of owning and driving. “So many people wanted to be part of it,” Capps admitted.
He had help from his former team owner Don “Snake” Prudhomme, from Jeff Gordon and Rick Hendrick of Hendrick Motorsports, from Labbe’s work in the wind tunnel. “To win so soon, well, I wasn’t expecting that, but it was so great to see all my heroes helping me.”
Before Ron Capps won his first title in 2016, he was the perennial “bridesmaid” who had been close but never got to smoke that cigar. And every year, he’d go to the NHRA banquet and listen to those “bloated speeches, go to the bar and try to go home soon,” he recalled. “What we did this year was consistently amazing and I’m loving being in that part of history. You can’t script what we did Saturday night, the track record run that allowed us to steal that No. 1 position.”
On Sunday’s with all the chips on the line, Ron Capps Motorsports put aside all the anxiety and stress and went for their title. “Guido is a big part of this because running 338, 337, or even 335 is not easy. It’s a big deal! And to be a part of the Toyota family is huge for us. We’ve made a point of consistency on the track. Tim Wilkerson is a perfect example of how you win through consistency. He doesn’t lean on his parts too hard – a lot of teams do that and wait for the Countdown, but myself and Robert, we were consistent all year.”
Every season is tougher than the one before, especially when you’re in a title hunt. Capps needed to get below a 60-point gap on race day and his No. 1 qualifier did that, leaving him 57 behind. But still, he had to go two runs farther than Robert Hight, with Prock and Cunningham plotting ways to go farther than Capps or Hagan. The latter driver made the job easier when he fell in the first round; when Bob Tasca III took his Ford Mustang to the win light over Hight in the second round, it still wasn’t time to start breathing.
Capps took Tasca out in the semifinals but, with NHRA rules, he still had to run the finals and not mess up. Had he gone over the centerline, it would have been over and Hight would have had his fourth Funny Car title. So between the penultimate and final rounds, Capps, Labbe and Antonelli talked strategy. The smart thing would have been to go to half-track and shut off; the racer in him wanted to go the full way. “I still didn’t know what I was gonna do when I staged the car,” Capps said of the last lap.
“Guido said he was going to try and run 340,” as the sky was darkening. He didn’t want to lose the run. “Had I kept it to the middle of the track like a normal run,” instead of hugging the left wall, “We would have gone 340-341. Every crew chief came by – nobody expected us to run down to the finish line – but they were impressed with us doing that.”
While this championship win, despite the race loss to Pedregon, as both team owner and team driver is just beginning to become a reality – with all the media he’s got to do – Ron Capps retains his humble nature and is still the same guy who’s at the start line watching Top Alcohol Dragster and Funny Car, watching who’s coming up in Super Comp. He hasn’t changed since his first, his second or even his third title. He’s still the same guy who wants to meet every fan and make sure they’re all having a great trackside experience. If that’s not the sign of a true champion, what is?
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