Ron Capps knew it was coming.
It didn’t occur the primary 12 months, 2022, when Capps gained his second consecutive – third general – NHRA Humorous Automobile championships. It didn’t occur in 2023 when he and the NAPA workforce picked up three wins and completed fourth within the championship. However it has arrived in 12 months three: the possession wrestle.
“I simply didn’t suppose it was going to be as making an attempt because it has this 12 months,” Capps advised RACER at Pomona forward of the season finale. “However I all the time puzzled after I labored for Don Prudhomme and Don Schumacher, if I could possibly be a workforce proprietor, how would I deal with that? So, it’s been making an attempt, however I’m fortunate. I’ve bought an excellent accomplice with NAPA, and that was key as a result of it might have been so much totally different. Much more stress. As it’s, I haven’t slept a complete lot.
“However, general, it’s been enjoyable.”
Capps branched out on his personal in 2022 and wasn’t naïve to what lay forward. It helped that he instantly had the assist of Schumacher, whom he spent 17 years with, and John Pressure, who known as him weekly. Rick Hendrick supplied recommendation any time it was wanted.
There was even a bunch textual content that featured Prudhomme, Hendrick, and Jeff Gordon earlier than his first 12 months of possession started. It was weird, to Capps, to have these legends providing something he may want in his subsequent enterprise.
When the 2022 season ended and Capps had gained the championship, he admitted to pondering, “This isn’t so arduous.” Regardless that he knew that as quickly as one thing behind the ropes – one thing new – got here alongside, it was going to create a problem.
And that’s the place Capps now finds himself in what he describes as maybe a rebuilding 12 months.
It begins on the finish of the earlier season; after the awards ceremony hangover wears off and the compliments from their fellow rivals fade away, Capps and Dean ‘Guido’ Antonelli, his crew chief, have a ritual of going via the season. Why did they win the championship? The place did they win it? However then, inevitably, comes the opposite aspect of issues that fell brief.
“After (successful) back-to-back championships,” Capps recollects, “Guido stated, ‘If we’re going to get forward of all people, we will hold operating what we’re operating, however all of those groups have caught us. We have to get a step forward. I’ve bought to do this sure factor within the clutch space, and we would hit it proper off the bat, or we would not. After which I bought a brand new gas pump I wish to strive.’
Capps’s workforce struggled to search out its candy spot in the course of the first half of the season. Picture through NHRA
“So, that occurs, and also you don’t begin so properly, and also you’re like, ‘OK, I’m behind you 100%.’ And it retains going. You may’t return to information from final 12 months and go, OK, I’ve modified this, however right here is the place I’ve had all this. It doesn’t work that approach in these automobiles, and I do know that from being a driver all these years. So, we wanted to get forward and step out.”
It was Sonoma in late July when Antonelli began to really feel comfy with the setup in Capps’s automobile. Capps went to the ultimate spherical that day and in two different occasions since.
However in a way, it’s a bit too late, and why Capps doesn’t essentially wish to see the season finish. With the workforce lastly hitting its stride, Capps has been annoyed and disillusioned to haven’t been in a position to battle Austin Prock, the category of the sector this 12 months, if his workforce was at its standard normal.
It was most placing to Capps in the course of the NAPA worker appreciation occasion he attends each season. Capps, together with different NAPA-sponsored drivers like Chase Elliott in NASCAR, are readily available and it was by no means an issue for Capps “to roll in there with many, many trophies and wins” that the executives observe and remind the drivers about.
Capps has been to a complete of six last rounds in 19 races. The dangerous information is that he’s winless.
“And I might inform you each single one we might have gained and will have,” Capps stated. “There have been instances my response time wasn’t pretty much as good because the particular person I used to be racing within the last. There have been instances the automobile went out and did one thing humorous that it hadn’t all day, and we had been favored to win within the last. However all of them had been shut.
“It’s robust. The primary couple had been like, I’m glad to be within the last. I really feel higher. It’s OK. Then we saved going to the finals and dropping, and it’s like, ‘Oh man, it hurts worse.’ It damage worse than not attending to the finals.”
And but, Capps is third within the championship standings with an opportunity to maneuver to second to finish the 12 months. The primary objective in Pomona is to out-qualify Jack Beckman, who’s driving John Pressure’s automobile, which is second in factors. The second objective is to not go winless in a second for the primary time since 2008.
“Within the grand scheme of issues, no matter,” Capps says. “It’s going to be written someplace if we don’t (win). The storybook ending can be to win this weekend, and that may make (this) interview even cooler. It’s irritating, too, as a result of that’s a reasonably cool streak to have a win at the very least as soon as a season.”
