{"id":54076,"date":"2018-08-07T15:01:58","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T22:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=54076"},"modified":"2018-08-07T15:01:58","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T22:01:58","slug":"brown-capps-set-milestones-at-seattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/brown-capps-set-milestones-at-seattle\/","title":{"rendered":"Brown, Capps Set Milestones at Seattle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This past Sunday marked a milestone victory for two NHRA Mello Yello nitro championship racers: 2016 Funny Car champ Ron Capps earned his 60th professional victory; three-time Top Fuel titleholder Antron Brown (2012, 2015, 2016) earned his 50th victory in the category (he also has 16 wins in Pro Stock Motorcycle).<\/p>\n

The two Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) drivers doubled up to give team owner Don Schumacher his second sweep of the nitro categories in 2018.<\/p>\n

This victory marks Brown\u2019s third consecutive win in Seattle, the final stop on NHRA\u2019s grueling Western Swing, that travels from Denver to Sonoma to Seattle on consecutive weekends. It was an all-DSR final round for the dragsters, with teammate Leah Pritchett coming up short. Brown crossed the 1,000-foot finish line in 3.835 seconds (322.88mph) to Pritchett\u2019s 3.849\/320.13.<\/p>\n

Brown, who was winless coming into this race said, \u201cIt\u2019s no secret that we struggled at the beginning of the year.\u201d With the loss of co-crew chief Brian Corradi to John Force Racing, there was bound to be a period of adjustment; it just lasted too long for a racer accustomed to victory. \u201cWe had a lot of our team moving around, so they\u2019ve had to get in new spots and positions,\u201d he explained. We also had other normal Top Fuel issues: clutch, engine combinations, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Brown, with co-crew chiefs Mark Oswald and Brad Mason, had extra help from Mike Green and the crew of Tony Schumacher\u2019s U.S. Army team. \u201cHe came over to give us an extra set of eyes and that really, really helped our whole team start going. We\u2019ve got everything in the groove and we\u2019ve just been doing it one run at a time,\u201d Brown said. \u201cOur main focus has just been to get better every race and learn this new combination and how to make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

A truly intense competitor, Brown hadn\u2019t thought about the significance of reaching 50 Top Fuel wins. \u201cPeople talked about it, but now after we got that win, it\u2019s pretty incredible. It\u2019s a true blessing. It feels to good to win with all these guys, who I\u2019ve worked with pretty much throughout my whole Top Fuel career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ron Capps\u2019 milestone 60th pro victory came on the heels of his two prior final round appearances in the Western Swing. Coming into this event at Pacific Raceways, Capps had a single event win on his resume for 2018, again another anomaly, but his team has been dealing with new header rules and with a change from five-disc to six-disc clutch program.<\/p>\n

Capps\u2019 117th final round found him, as the No. 2 points holder in NHRA\u2019s regular season tally, racing No. 1 Courtney Force. It was Mopar Dodge power against Chevrolet, a classic match-up. Force ran out front until the 660-foot marker, when her engine became unsettled, allowing Capps to power past her and on to his second victory of the year, turning 4.033\/314.90 to Force\u2019s 4.115\/255.63.<\/p>\n

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The driver\u2019s memory was of his victory at Seattle in 1995, when he won on a Tuesday after rain delays. \u201cI was in an unsponsored car; I borrowed money for a fire suit and Pennzoil was on my suit – my mom sewed it on. That was a big moment,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been here many times and have been able to win in Funny Car, but that was a fateful day.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat day was, what (former team owner) Don Prudhomme told me, that was the day he started watching me on the track, how I drove, the way I carried myself. That day probably propelled me to the next step of getting a phone call from \u2018The Snake\u2019 and, from there led me to be able to drive for Don Schumacher. I\u2019ve driven for two of the biggest names in the sport, represented three Fortune 500 companies in my 20+-year career. I love racing cars; I live for it, so it\u2019s neat to come full circle and stage the car in that same lane where I won on that Tuesday.\u201d This was Capps\u2019 fourth victory at Pacific Raceways.<\/p>\n

With his victory Capps was able to prevent Force from widening her points lead as the regular season draws to a close. Only two more contests are scheduled before NHRA\u2019s Countdown to the Championship six-race playoffs begin after the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis on Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got a target on their back,\u201d said Capps of Force and her team. \u201cThey are the points leaders, obviously. We\u2019re trying to make ground up on them and you can\u2019t do that when she\u2019s next to me in the final round – you just get 20 points. But it\u2019s going to be fun. We\u2019re just shooting to be as high as we can in points during the regular season and they\u2019re going to be tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his win at Seattle, Capps stopped John Force Racing from sweeping the Western Swing, after John Force won at Denver and Robert Hight took the Wally trophy in Sonoma. \u201cThat was in my head [in the waterbox]: \u2018don\u2019t let John Force sweep the swing in Funny car,\u2019 so I\u2019m glad we could put a stop to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Sunday marked a milestone victory for two NHRA Mello Yello nitro championship racers: 2016 Funny Car champ Ron Capps earned his 60th professional victory; three-time Top Fuel titleholder Antron Brown (2012, 2015, 2016) earned his 50th victory in the category <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":54077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,3470,22],"tags":[5614,1322,161,3317,41,7,6141,442],"class_list":["post-54076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-column","category-news","category-event-coverage","tag-anne-proffit","tag-anton-brown","tag-event-coverage-2","tag-mello-yello","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-nitro","tag-ron-capps"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/285-AntronBrown-Sunday-Seattle-min-e1533679219360.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-e4c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54081,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54076\/revisions\/54081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}