By Wes Holtsclaw (wholtsclaw@starhq.com)
BRISTOL — Ron Capps is hoping a new chassis finally gets him over the hump.
A year ago, the NAPA Auto Parts Funny Car driver appeared ready to pick up his first NHRA title with one of the best seasons of his career.
Once the Countdown to the Championship began, however, things went awry for the Don Schumacher team which quickly sank to a fourth place finish after leading the series’ point standings the bulk of the year.
“Once we were in it, we didn’t peak at the right time,” Capps, a three-time Funny Car championship runner-up said Friday at Bristol. “We won all of these races and went in as the points leader, then all of a sudden we had to snap out of this test mode.”
This season, although he currently sits ninth in Funny Car points, Capps is admittedly not having his usual strong start to the season having yet to reach a final round.
“For our standard, we haven’t had a good season so far. It’s been strange,” Capps said.
Due to John Force’s major accident a year ago, NHRA issued a new mandatory chassis that teams have to run by July.
Many of the teams in the top of the current standings have yet to make the move. Capps and his crew decided to get a start at Bristol, hoping it provided the spark they need.
“We’ve made one run in this car (prior to Bristol),” Capps said. “We’ve only been to the finish line one time, but it’s hot and humid and our other car wasn’t doing so well these last couple of weeks so we decided to do it this week.
“If we have a bad weekend, we’ll have a bad weekend but we need to get start getting used to this car because it’s going to be the future and we have to have it, so we need to get going.
“Some of the guys that are doing real well, haven’t switched so it’ll be interesting to see what happens when they all switch too.”
The move to the new chassis certainly didn’t hurt Capps’ team in qualifying.
Capps delivered a run of 4.831 seconds on Friday night with a speed of 317.79 mph to capture the ninth qualifying position.
Regardless of today’s finish, Capps is hoping that the move enables him to peak at the right time at the end of the year.
But first thing’s first, he’s got to lock up a top ten finish going into the Countdown. Given the talent of the Funny Car class, an automatic top ten isn’t a given.
“It’s going to be interesting,” Capps said. “There are too many good teams. If you look at funny car, it’s the toughest division in the history of the NHRA by far. We’ve got four funny cars in DSR that can win any given time. Then you go down the list, a lot of cars are capable of winning. You can’t do that in Top Fuel. Just being able to qualify is a big deal. I understand that. We go through it every weekend.”
But if any track can give the NAPA team a boost, it’s Bristol.
Capps is a two-time winner and multiple finalist at the track which he considers one of his favorite.
“Every since we started coming here, we had the special Winston race and I went to the final there. I’ve won twice here and been to another couple of finals,” said Capps. “They ask, why you do well on certain tracks? I don’t know. There are guys that do well at certain places.”
Capps also wants to do well for his sponsor, NAPA, which approved one of the sharpest looking cars in Funny Car racing with a new paint scheme.
“NAPA’s always been pretty conservative with their paint scheme, and Michael (Waltrip)’s joked a few times that he wants a paint scheme like ours. It was funny, because when the guys came out with the design it was so flashy we didn’t think NAPA would run something like that. They made a great decision on the paint scheme and everything. We just need to get them a win.”
