Capps Ponders His Funny Car History: Is That Helping His 2013 Quest?

Funny Car championship contender Ron Capps doesn’t know if history is his friend or his enemy.
 
He has used it to encourage himself during this Countdown. And this is the Countdown in which he was supposed to make up for letting Don Schumacher Racing fraternity brother Jack Beckman ace him out of his first series title by two points last year, the one in which he would overcome the label of “four-time second-place finisher.”
 
But the more the NAPA Dodge Charger driver studies history, the more confused he seems to become about whether it’s a yardstick for his success.
 
For example . . .
 
He lost in the first round at Dallas, Race No. 2 in the six-event playoff. As he headed to St. Louis, the third stop in the six-race playoff schedule, he cited Beckman’s situation from 2012. Beckman came into that St. Louis race third in points and 97 behind Capps, who was leading at the time.
 
“We’re going to St. Louis in a position similar that Jack was in and we all know how that turned out,” Capps said. When he said that, he was sixth in the standings, 102 points behind then-leader Matt Hagan.
 
Then at St. Louis he lost to John Force in Round 2 but remained in sixth place — but this time he was 111 points out of first.
 
Heading into Race No. 4, at Reading, Pa., Capps had said, “We have three races left, and we have to win all three.”
 
And he was talking about the traditional weather conditions making it perfect for him to set the national elapsed-time record for 20 extra points.

 (That’s sort of a bittersweet subject for him, because he was in excellent position to go for a national E.T. record at Englishtown, N.J., last year but he and crew chief Rahn Tobler decided not to do that. Those 20 points could have made the difference between a championship and a second-place finish.

 
But he said, “I don’t think I could change a thing last year. It’s easy to look back at certain qualifying runs that we could have and should have. All it is going to do is aggravate you. I felt like at the end of the year, even though we lost that day, Sunday [at Pomona],  . . . we got back to the pit area and within an hour, I looked back and said we had a great season. It was almost a fantastic ending, but it just didn’t happen.

Yes, we are more than 100 points out but stranger things have happened many times. It’s a challenge and we’ve been posed challenges like this in the past.

We set the all-time quickest run. We had such a great season, and I knew we were going to have another chance if we kept the team together. So it wasn’t that bad.”
 
But Reading’s weather was no help this year. It was sunny and warm, nothing like the mineshaft conditions racers love about Reading, nothing helpful in the way of producing record-setting numbers.
 
Moreover, he had said, “When we drive through the gates at Maple Grove, we know we will have to be near the top of the qualifying charts.” He wasn’t. He started 12th on the grid of 16.
 
Capps gave himself the pep talk: “Yes, we are more than 100 points out but stranger things have happened many times. It’s a challenge and we’ve been posed challenges like this in the past. We’ve seen drivers lose bigger points leads than we’re faced with. We are only worried about controlling what we can do.”
 
What he did at Reading was lose again to Force, this time in the semifinal round, but he lost even more ground as Force took over the points lead and left Capps still in sixth but a nearly impossible 160 points to make up.
 
“At Reading last year, we lost the points lead and left trailing Beckman by 23 points,” Capps said.
 
Beckman set the national record at Reading last season and reached the semifinals, while Capps lost to Beckman in the second round of eliminations. “We had a terrible weekend there last year, and it probably cost us the championship,” Capps said.
 
“We went to the next race at Vegas and had to win,” he said, “and we did just that. Unfortunately, Beckman went to the final round with us, so we only gained 20 points on him when we beat him.”
 
“Force has the type of car like we had last year at this time,” Capps, a three-time winner this season, said after his Reading performance. “The Countdown is all about hitting your stride at the right time. Force didn’t have it going on early in the year, but he has one tough car right now.”

Again Capps looked to history for some encouragement.
 
“After we left here last year and went to Vegas we won that race and it put us right back in position for a chance to win the championship. All we can do is keep moving forward. We gained some ground on all the drivers ahead of us but one.”
 Capps, who earned three of his 40 NHRA victories this year during the so-called “regular season,” has recorded four of his five Las Vegas victories at the fall race there.

“We have to make these last two races our time of the year,” Capps said. “I know we have the talent to win, and we’re going to the last two races with a full head of steam. We’ve shown we can bounce back and be competitive. I look forward to going to Las Vegas now.”
 
Capps has been nothing if not resilient, especially lately. After his comeback from a DNQ and what felt like rock-bottom last spring, he showed his ability to rebound this summer. He won at Sonoma, failed to qualify at Seattle, and won at Brainerd — all in a span of 22 days.

 
What might seem a little bit clairvoyant today is something Capps threw out for discussion back in August, when he was in second place. He talked about how difficult it is in the preseason to predict which 10 drivers might make the Countdown field and which strong drivers ultimately might be left out.
 
“You know there will be two or three really good cars, really big-sponsor teams, that there’s no room for them,” he said. “I was kind of hoping NHRA would do something like NASCAR where they open up a little bit of a wild card or another incentive way to get another team in, because there are just too many teams to get in. It tells you how tough our category is.
 
“I think throwing in some incentive things here and there would make it fun and would get more incentive from race to race. The little qualifying points that NHRA threw in, I think that’s awesome. It’s fun to count those points and see the crew chief kind of light up if they’re first, second or third quickest of each session. I would like to see a wild card.,” Capps said.
 
“I’d like to see 12 cars in it. I’d like to see just more ways of adding up to your points when the Countdown starts . . . because that guy could come in sixth place in the Countdown right now, and let’s say he got four wins and he’s got a few extra points for wins, then it starts mixing stuff up. Rather than a team that might be leading the points but by a few races going into the last couple races and maybe going with a test or something and another team wins a couple races and it vaults them up there to where they could be leading, believe it or not, instead of just being sixth. Something like that.”
 
Something like that would be really helpful to Capps right now. But what he said before the Dallas race remains true: “I’ve said before I’d rather be the hunter than the hunted. And now we really have our work cut out for us.”

We’ve been close. But I’ll be honest with you: My career could end right now, and I’m content with what I’ve done in the sport.

Someday, like fellow Funny Car driver Tony Pedregon before him, Capps can earn that series championship after four runner-up finishes. And Capps said he has made peace with the notion that whatever happens is fine with him.
     
“We’ve been close. But I’ll be honest with you: My career could end right now, and I’m content with what I’ve done in the sport.
 
“I mean, I get to drive a great race car, [with] Don Schumacher and all the people he puts together. I got to drive for the Snake . . . all the stuff I’ve done . . . all the races I’ve won . . . If it’s at the end, I’m OK with it. I stop to realize and I have to remind myself I’m one of the lucky, gosh, I guess you could say one percent or less that gets to drive a Nitro Funny Car for a living. I get to wake up, put a fire suit on as my job and go 320 miles per hour and represent a great company and run around and get to do commercials and movies. I’m truly blessed.”
 
Or is Capps, who has raced Funny Cars exclusively since 1997, nagged by his history? Maybe he’s just focusing on his future.
 
“I’d love to win a championship,” he said.