It was one hell of a race this past weekend for NHRA Funny Car star Ron Capps at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd, Minnesota. Over the last couple of weeks, since Johnny Gray managed to shatter the body of his Funny Car in half while using the new tethering system developed after Robert Hight’s body explosion earlier this year in Charlotte, the Funny Car ranks have been up in arms over the best way to handle keeping the bodies on the cars in the event of a catastrophic engine explosion.
Capps was on the lucky end (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) of the equation on Saturday during the third of four Funny Car qualifying sessions. His NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Funny Car lit up the track with a huge engine explosion, the cause of which is undetermined.
It’s amazing to watch the nitro classes in slo-mo video like the NHRA is providing today – the ability to watch the body shake, rattle and roll as a car makes its way down the track is just awesome. Until the big boom, that is. Capps’ DSR Mopar machine lit up like the Vegas night sky, but thankfully the rear-most body sections blew away, the parachutes released, the Electrimotion fuel-shutoff safety valve worked properly to kill the fuel supply and Capps managed to walk away from the scary incident with not even a scratch.
Perhaps the best part of his weekend? He ran through the Funny Car field on Sunday and took home his third Wally of the season by eliminating Matt Hagan by the slim margin of one-thousandth of a second – at over 310 MPH. A heck of a showing for the longtime driver on a weekend that could have ended much differently. Capps trails only Hagan in the points standings as of this writing.