Ron Capps completed a fairytale win to finish the US Nationals, emulating the feat of his former team owner and mentor Don ‘the Snake’ Prudhomme while driving his rolling tribute to Prudhomme, a one-race replica of the 1973 race-winning Hot Wheels Funny car.
Capps defeated his Toyota TRD teammate JR Todd in the final round, his 3.98s run more than enough to account for Todd who smoked his tyres down track and coasted to a 4.13s run.
Todd had issues leading into the final round, losing his brakes in his semi-final win over Cruz Pedregon when the parachutes caught on the brake lines of his DHL Supra Funny Car.
That led to a loss of brake pressure and Todd having to choose between hitting the parked cars in the turnout area or beaching the car on a grass berm.
Todd chose the latter, with the car bottoming out on the earth bank causing enough damage that the team began preparing the back-up car while the primary was returned to the pit area on a flatbed truck.
Ultimately the car was deemed to be okay for the final round.
Capps’ win was a statement of authority, with wins over Championship contenders Robert Hight (who was also the #1 qualifier) & Matt Hagan in the semi-finals and second round respectively.
“You can’t dream this big. I mean, you could hope, and you can put all this stuff together and we did it to have some fun to do something cool for Indy,” said Capps.
“This just doesn’t happen. You just put this together and hope that it’s going to have some success and you end up winning.”
“I’ve been wanting to do a real throwback and thankfully the people that make decisions at NAPA Auto Parts for the motorsports teams understood the legacy and understood how cool this thing was and they stepped off the car and made sure that we did it the right way, and with Toyota, the same thing.”
“They wanted to be a part of it and then I called ‘Snake,’ and sent him the picture and have just been talking on the phone and how cool he thought it was.”
“It’s just amazing,” said Prudhomme. “When he first sent me the paint scheme it brought a tear to my eye I thought ‘This thing’s beautiful.’ It’s just this is something I’m going to remember for a long time.”
Top Fuel was equally dramatic, with Antron Brown becoming the first driver to win Top Fuel at the US Nationals from the number 15 qualifying position.
Brown, who only made it into the field on his last qualifying run, beat Championship contender Brittany Force in round one when she backfired the supercharger, Clay Millican and points leader Justin Ashley on route to the final round.
Brown beat four-time champion and number one qualifier Steve Torrence in the final.
Torrence was forced to move to a back-up car overnight, with his team finding a kink in the chassis of their primary car after qualifying.
The Top Fuel Final was a tight race, with only two thousandths of a second separating the driver at the green light and Brown’s 3.779s pass enough to account for Torrence’s 3.870s run.
“This is one that was a getting-dirty win,” Brown summarized.
“We went through all the trials and tribulations and that’s what makes this one so special, that through all the pain, all the stuff all the way through qualifying, we found a way as a team.”
“Whether I was down, or Brian [Corradi, crew chief] gets down, the only one that’s got ice in your veins was [crew chief Mark] Oswald; he’s just like, ‘We still can do it.’ But we were down and out, brother, we had two strikes in that final qualifying section, we just hit an RBI and brought in the runs.
“We made a change to the clutch in Brainerd and thought we could work with it here, but it just wasn’t having it – everything that we thought we were doing was wrong.”
“We kept making changes until the end. Once we figured it out on that qualifying run — basically taking one [clutch disc] out and another one in, we knew we had it for race day and we had a package we could tune on.”
For former Don Schumacher Racing team-mates Capps and Brown, it was also their second successive win at the US Nationals.
Matt Hartford converted his number one qualifying effort in Pro Stock to his first US Nationals victory, and in the process cemented his position as the number two seed in the Countdown to the Championship.
He bested second time finalist Fernando Cuadra Jnr who was searching for his first NHRA National Event victory.
Championship leader Dallas Glenn fell in round two to five-time Champion Erica Enders, who then went on to lose against eventual winner Hartford in the semi-final.
Matt Smith went back-to-back in US Nationals victories, with the multi-time champion besting the all-conquering rooking Gaige Herrera in the semi-final when a spark porcelain broke on the Vance & Hines powered Suzuki.
Smith beat Hector Arana Jnr in the final round, with Arana redlighting away his chances by leaving three thousandths of a second too early.
The NHRA tour moves on to Maple Grove Raceway in Pennsylvania in two weeks’ time, the first race in the six-race Countdown to the Championship.
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