During his 27-year career in NHRA drag racing, reigning and two-time Funny Car champion Ron Capps has experienced a lot of wild scenarios.
He was forced to scramble at the start of the 2020 season because his car and equipment were destroyed in a hauler fire near Amarillo, Texas.
Four races into the 2012 campaign, he had his car and entire crew switched out on him. In 2016, during the U.S. Nationals, he spent a period of time hanging upside down, the extruding body latches snagged on the catch fence at the end of the sand trap after his car failed to stop.
He has sat just a foot away from the fiery blast of an exploding engine at 300 mph several times. He has felt the ragged-edge exhilaration of racing a dirt late model at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway. He has tested International Race of Champions cars with drivers from NASCAR and the IndyCar Series, and competed in the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals.
He also has had the privilege of working for many years with Don Prudhomme and Don Schumacher, both legends as drivers and team owners.
But Capps, 56, is embarking on a journey that might jolt him more than any of those other stressful situations. He has become an NHRA team owner.
That, the 68-time event winner said, “Has been a lifelong dream. I’ve been in the sport for almost 30 years as a driver and being able to race for legends like Don ‘The Snake’ Prudhomme and Don Schumacher, it’s obviously been an incredible experience. I’ve been very lucky I’ve gotten to drive for two of the elite motorsports owners.
“You stand back and look at our sport and how well it’s been through all this period (the pandemic), but where is it going? Where is the sport going to be in the next generation?” Capps continued. “I’ve been very fortunate to compete at a high level all these years and be successful and it feels like the right time to take this next step.
“I always thought about it. I just thought it was so out of touch. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen.”
Well, now it’s happening and while Funny Car owner-driver colleagues Bob Bode and Cruz Pedregon wish Capps well, they promise even more exciting times are ahead for him.
“The big change from where I sat in the driver’s seat to going to the owner part is all the headaches that follow the car — the parts, the maintenance, the crew, the crew guy who doesn’t like the other crew guy and getting them to be friends. He has probably worked on some of that as a driver, but all of a sudden, it’s all on him,” Bode said. “I always liked that part, being the owner. The driver part was only a few seconds. The owner part is every day, keeping the pieces moving.”
Pedregon, who said when he set out on his own years ago that he “jumped in the deep end and had no life preserver,” said Capps “has a little more to worry about, just like I have. So I think the playing field will be a little more level.”
Pedregon recognizes that Cappsis driving the same championship car he bought from Don Schumacher Racing and would have the same crew. However, he said, “Still, when the buck stops with you, there are so many little details. I don’t know that they even know what the details are yet. So there are different levels of challenges.”
Dean Antonelli, Capps’ co-crew chief along with John Medlen, is one of those upon which the fresh team owner will rely. After all, when Antonelli was working for John Force Racing during the mid-1990s and Capps was a rookie driving Roger Primm’s Top Fuel dragster, he would give Capps tips about where to eat and stay on the road. Antonelli is wise beyond the nuts and bolts of the Funny Car.
Antonelli expects Capps to mix “enthusiasm as a team owner” with “maybe fear of being a team owner. He’s going to get a life lesson of running a business. It’s the first time he’s ever done that,” Antonelli said. “He’s been a paid shoe — very successful, great social-media following, great spokesman for his sponsors. Now, he’s not going to be a paid shoe. It’s a big risk for him.”
“I haven’t been used to the ownership part, but I’ve got a lot of people to lean on,” Capps said. “What’s been the coolest is the people who have reached out to me — competitors: ‘Open book. Whatever you need. How can I help?’ They just don’t want to let me fail.”
That comes with a caveat. Pedregon said he wishes Capps well — and immediately followed that with, “Looking forward to beating him, that’s for sure.”
Even Don Schumacher, who in the past two years saw all six of his drivers leave his organization by the end of 2021, pledged, “I’m there for all of the teams that have started out on their own — Antron (Brown) and Ron Capps — and I’m there to assist Tony Stewart (who’s fielding wife Leah Pruett in Top Fuel and Matt Hagan in Funny Car) in any way. He’s got a great organization. I’ll assist any and all of them and the sport any way I reasonably can.”
Capps would say that Schumacher already has helped him, even long before he presented his plan to the boss last September.
“I’ve been lucky to be around two pretty great owners in our sport — and they’re completely different at what they do and their approaches,” Capps said. “I was smart enough to know to take mental notes on a lot of little things every day and watch the process and how they’re so successful at what they’ve done — watching how Snake carried himself and how he supported his sponsors and watching how Don has brought the business-world approach to team ownership.”
Capps acknowledges the pandemic was the catalyst for making the move.
“It kind of comes back to the pandemic. I grew up around the sport of drag racing. I probably was conceived at a race track,” Capps said proudly. “Thankfully, my parents brought me up around the sport of drag racing, albeit bracket racing at local tracks, like Santa Maria and San Luis Obispo. My family raced sportsman level (when I was) growing up. It’s been everything in my life. The lifelong dream to own your own team has always been there. I always wanted to get to that next level.”
Antonelli says Capps and his wife, Shelley, figured that time is now.
“The pandemic made him think about where he is in his life and he thought, ‘If we don’t do it right now, we’ll never get to do it,’” Antonelli said. “Everything has to align. You have to have sponsors who are ready to commit for long term. You cannot get into it for a one- or two-year deal.”
NAPA Auto Parts has signed on with Capps for an initial three-year agreement that almost certainly has roll-over options. They have been partners since 2008.
And Antonelli thinks Capps likely has “aspirations to grow to a multiple-car team in the next few years, not right away.”
But the single-car trend, for the moment, has some racers happy.
Tony Schumacher has returned to full-time competition in the Top Fuel class, so DSR is back where it began in 1998, when Don Schumacher returned to the sport for the first time since he quit driving in 1974. It is a single-car team.
Capps’ departure completed the startlingly quick unraveling of the powerhouse that earned an NHRA-best 366 victories and 16 championships. And that means no more DSR Funny Cars in the Camping World Drag Racing Series.
Bode believes that’s a positive.
“Watching Don with all those teams was a deterrent,” Bode said. “People would say, ‘How am I going to run against these teams and they have a billion dollars?’ Now, they’re going to look at these individual teams and say, ‘I can be as good as this team.’ A lot of people may come out. I like that idea.”
Pedregon said it might be helpful, not having to combat “that four-headed monster” ( Jack Beckman, Capps, Hagan, and Tommy Johnson Jr.)
However the Funny Car championship chase turns out, Ron Capps is getting to fulfill his longtime dream.