Ron Capps successfully defended his Gatornationals Funny Car event championship last week and he’s aiming to repeat again at the O’Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals this weekend at Houston Raceway Park, where he won last year’s event.
In 2006, the driver of the Brut Revolution Dodge Charger R/T arrived at and left Houston with the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car points lead. This season he is in second, just six points back of Robert Hight, but he feels it’s a stronger start towards earning his first Funny Car championship.
“Houston always seems to be a challenge, ” he said. “Houston is the type of track where, if we see any kind of cool conditions, records can be set there. We know how good that track is. They patched some stuff up and fixed the track last year and it showed in the elapsed times.
“Come race day it got hot and humid. And we had just left Gainesville with the same conditions, so Sunday morning when I woke up I was pretty excited. Ace (crew chief Ed McCulloch) and the guys had just proved that they could run in those conditions and we won again.
“And now here we are again. We left Gainesville last week which definitely had tricky conditions and we got a win and we went down the race track every time. Ace is definitely feeling like the car’s responding to everything he does.
“Right now things are good, ” added Capps, whose team’s goal this year is to qualify high to gain extra points. So far so good, as Capps has qualified third, fourth and third so far. “I’m really excited about going to any track with any conditions at this point because I feel that Ace has really made a lot of progress during Friday night sessions. And, even come Sunday, if the sun’s out and it’s hot and humid, I get excited.
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