- Ron Capps, driver of the NAPA Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat for Don Schumacher Racing, won the NHRA Funny Car title at Pomona, California, on Nov. 14.
- A year ago, DSR had six championship-caliber cars in its Top Fuel and Funny Car stable.
- This year, after a major sponsor pulled out of the sport, two of those drivers—Funny Car pilots Jack Beckman, a past champion, and Tommy Johnson Jr.—were gone. Two others—Top Fuel driver Leah Pruett and past champion Matt Hagan—were on the way out the door after announcing they were heading to a new team led by owner Tony Stewart in 2022.
- A fifth DSR driver—three-time Top Fuel champ Antron Brown—is leaving DSR to form his own team for 2022.
If you happened to send a text message, email, or social post to Ron Capps congratulating him for winning his second NHRA Camping World Funny Car Championship and are hoping for a response, be patient.
Capps has been kind of busy celebrating.
"I’ve got to start answering all my text messages," Capps laughed, two days after the driver of the NAPA Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat for Don Schumacher Racing won the title at Pomona, California, on Nov. 14. "I’ve got like 400-and-something messages. I’ve got to sit down and work on those.”
All right, we’re happy to cut the champ a break—especially less than 48 hours from winning a title in what he described as the most competitive NHRA Funny Car season in at least a quarter-century.
"It’s hilarious because you ask any driver throughout the year," Capps said, "even leading up to the last few races, veteran drivers who have been in this fight—Robert Hight, of course Matt Hagan, J.R. Todd, you go down the list—they all said the same thing I did, and that was, this season was (the most competitive) by far.
"But I hadn’t heard everybody say what I was thinking, that it was the most competitive, bunched-up, who-knows-what’s-going-to-happen Funny Car division ever—for me anyway. And I’ve been doing it (in Funny Car) since ’97."
Just how competitive was it? Well, this one was so much different than Capps’ championship run in 2016. Five years ago, Capps dominated the field with five wins, five runner-up finishes, a career-high 10 finals appearances and four top-qualifying efforts.
This time around, Capps, 56, won the title with two wins, three runner-up finishes, and three top qualifiers.
The championship was the 19th for Don Schumacher Racing.
Another reason this one had a different feel was the changing face of DSR itself. A year ago, DSR had six championship-caliber cars in its Top Fuel and Funny Car stable. This year, after a major sponsor pulled out of the sport, two of those drivers—Funny Car pilots Jack Beckman, a past champion, and Tommy Johnson Jr.—were gone. Two others—Top Fuel driver Leah Pruett and past champion Matt Hagan—are heading to a new team led by owner Tony Stewart in 2022. A fifth DSR driver—three-time Top Fuel champ Antron Brown—is forming his own team for 2022.
That sixth driver, Capps, is expected to announce his 0wn 2022 plans on December 9.
Even Capps had his share of upheaval going into 2021. He lost longtime crew chief Rahn Tobler, who retired and was replaced by co-crew chiefs John Medlen and Dean “Guido” Antonelli.
It was a season of one dark cloud after another over the DSR paddock.
"It really was," Capps said. "And for me it was strange because I was put together with this new team. The comfort you have every season of having the same team and no changeover like I’ve had since 2012 (wasn’t there). Previous to that, I was with the same team for five years. There’s something to be said about that during the wintertime and the offseason when you know you have the same personnel, the same guys buckling you into the race car, the same crew chief pointing at you in the windshield before the run."
Tobler’s retirement meant a new voice in the garage yelling over the roar of the engines.
"And (to) hear that this far into my career," Capps said, "I was thrown a little bit of a curveball and put together with this other team. But I grew up being friends with the crew chief (Antonelli), when he was a crew member for John Force years ago. So, we’ve been friends a long time, and finally getting the chance to work together was cool. But there was so many different things coming into this year.
"I had to learn how to drive again in a completely different way. There was a lot of different things that they did with this race car compared to what I was used to. It was a learning curve and it was sort of exciting. It sort of took me back to my rookie year and some other things where you really had to sort of adapt and get used to how incredible these cars are, how fast they are because I was having to learn sort of how to drive again."
Capps and the new NAPA Funny Car lineup wasted no time putting themselves in the discussion among contenders in 2021 with three No. 1-qualifying efforts early in the season.
"I was thrust into this car, we show up for the first race and lo and behold, No. 1 qualifier, so it was a great start," Capps said. "It really showed a lot of promise, and we worked really well together. But as we saw, so many times, the lead had changed for the points and different teams stepped up and were dominating here and there.
"But we did sort of just kind of clunk along consistently. We didn’t win a race until the middle of the summer, but we were in some final rounds and we had a lot of low qualifiers—probably more low qualifiers for me in my career in one season than I’ve ever had."
Capps qualified outside the top eight just once all season.
"We were constantly top-three, top-four qualifier," he said. "We knew we had the performance. You’ve got to set yourself up for the playoffs and the Countdown, you’ve just got to be in position. And we were better than just being in position—we had the points lead. So that was a great, great thing to have a little bit of a bonus of points going into the Countdown."
Capps went on to win the championship on the last day of the season at the Auto Club NHRA Finals by 37 points over Hagan. Hagan knocked off Capps head to head in the second round in the season finale at Pomona before losing to Alexis DeJoria in the semifinals. After knocking off Capps, a Hagan event win in the Finals would have given Hagan the championship and led to a long offseason of what-ifs for Capps.
2021 NHRA Funny Car Final Standings
- Ron Capps 2,676
- Matt Hagan 2,639
- Bob Tasca III 2,586
- Cruz Pedregon 2,555
- John Force 2,543
- Alexis DeJoria 2.526
- J.R. Todd 2,498
- Robert Hight 2,478
- Tim Wilkerson 2,361
- Jim Campbell 2,238
"We rolled into Pomona with a 58-point lead," Capps said. "We needed to get (the lead) over 60 to create a scenario where Hagan had to go a whole ’nother round, no matter what ended up happening. That was huge. Even though he lost the next round, he would have had to go on and win the race (to win the title). It’s a great team—and I figured they were going to win—but having to go another round really put a lot of pressure on him."
While it all worked out in the end, the final day didn’t go exactly as hoped for Capps.
"You can ask any other driver," Capps said. "You hate to have to rely on someone else to do your dirty work. To me, we had to win that second round, (and then) we would have clinched and been done and not have to sit around and worry.
"Well, it didn’t work out that way, because we dropped a cylinder at 2.9 seconds. Unfortunately, (Hagan) drove around me. Everything turned out all right, but at the time, I was devastated. I thought, 'Oh boy, here we go.'"
Capps’ championship was a nice cherry on top for Don Schumacher Racing before the organization goes through its next major makeover. Eight-time Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher is returning to the DRS fold on a full-time basis next year, but gone will be Pruett, Hagan, and Brown. The NHRA world will know Capps’ plans in December.
Capps, who said it’s easy to be a little shell-shocked when he thinks about the turnover of the last year, looks at the dramatic changes at DSR philosophically.
"We just added the 19th championship to DSR," Capps said. "We’re the winningest organization (with more than 350 wins for the organization). You can look at it two different ways. Things are changing so much that people are going off doing other things, or you can look at it and say, man, they were able to go off and do something on their own because of what they were around and because of the level of professionalism, everything, championships.
"What Antron has done the last year in preparing to go off on his own, he’s obviously learned a lot from Don. If we don’t have the Antrons doing what they’re doing, there’s not going to be a sport of drag racing in 10 years.
"There’s something to be said about all the banners we’ve put up at DSR."
