NHRA Las Vegas Results, Updated Standings: Ron Capps Wins for First Time as NHRA Team Owner

• Ron Capps has won 68 times in the Funny Car class, but this was his first win as team owner

• Brittany Force held off a trio of multi-time champions to capture her first victory of the season

• Erica Enders’ Pro Stock triumph made her the winningest driver in any class at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Declaring, “Dreams are made, man. This is America,” Funny Car’s No. 1 qualifier Ron Capps celebrated his first victory in his dual role as driver and team owner Sunday at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

An emotional Capps cradled his bronze “Wally” trophy and fought back tears, coached himself through his post-race interview: “I’ve got to get through this.

“To get this win as a first-time owner . . . I feel like I’ve won a championship,” the two-time and reigning class titlist said. “It’s incredible to have a dream so long as a kid and to be standing here as a team owner in the NHRA, representing such great sponsors. I don’t even know what to say.”

Capps looked at his trophy and said, “I don’t deserve this.” He credited his crew, his family, his NAPA Auto Parts sponsors, and a special couple – Tony and Gail Wilson who traveled to Las Vegas from Oregon, where they have been NAPA store owners for 35 years. “He’s battling cancer,” Capps said of Tony Wilson. “He can’t even eat, but he came to this race.”

The victory was Capps’69th overall (68th in Funny Car after one in Top Fuel), and it came in his second final-round appearance in the season’s four races so far.

Phoenix runner-up and Gatornationals winner Matt Hagan, hoping to score back-to-back victories for Tony Stewart Racing, was runner-up again Sunday. Two-time 2022 winner Robert Hight and Alexis De Joria also were finalists.

Brittany Force Prevails in Top Fuel

Brittany Force leaped from her Monster Energy Dragster after winning the Top Fuel final round and said, “This is huge for our team. Man, that was a killer run.”

Call it a giant-killer run.

In a final-round quad that represented 16 championships, including the past eight, Force held off Steve Torrence, the master of four-wide racing. Her winning 3.718-second, 338.00-mph performance was the quickest and fastest of the meet, and her speed was the second-best in Top Fuel history. She owns all but two of the top 12 speeds on record. For the fourth straight event this year, she clocked the fastest speed in the class on this same track where she set the national speed record (338.17) in the fall of 2019.

Force gave the Top Fuel class its fourth different winner this season, joining Justin Ashley, Mike Salinas, and Tripp Tatum on the list.

For the third time in a single day, Force had to race Torrence, who had won six of the past seven four-wide races overall and two of the previous three four-wide races at Las Vegas.

It’s no secret that Torrence, Tony Schumacher, and Antron Brown, with a combined 15 titles and in succession have dominated the better part of the past two decades, haven’t gotten much traction in 2022. But they ended up in the final quad with Force, and she claimed her 12th victory and second in four-wide format but first at The Strip.

Schumacher finished third in the final and Brown fourth. Both were seeking their first four-wide success.

Torrence, in the Capco Dragster, has won four straight at zMAX Dragway at Concord, N.C. (the birth of the four-wide format in 2010). He’s the only driver in a four-wheeled category to win more than twice in four-lane competition. What’s more, he has earned at least one victory from each of the four lanes. So Force’s feat was extra-distinct.

After a stop April 22-24 at Houston for the final SpringNationals before the racetrack is plowed under, the Camping World Drag Racing Series will return to four-wide racing April 29-May 1 at zMAX Dragway.

Erica Enders Is Tops in Pro Stock

Pro Stock winner Erica Enders became the most successful driver in any professional class at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway as she breezed past runner-up Cristian Cuadra, one of her Elite Performance Motorsports teammates, to her second victory in four events so far this campaign.

This was Enders’ ninth triumph at Las Vegas, her third overall at this event but second in four-wide format in successive visits. She broke a tie (at eight victories) with Greg Anderson (Pro Stock) and Tony Schumacher (Top Fuel).

“Vegas has always been so wonderful to me,” she said. “Our Elite team lost one of the best guys on the planet this last week, “Scotty O” [Scott Oksas, a West Coast Pro Mod racer, who passed away March 28]. We’re doing this for his kids, Joey and Anthony.”

Also in her final-round quad were Dallas Glenn and Mason McGaha.

Lucas Oil Series Quartet Races For $4,000 Bet

Not everyone will be pleased with NHRA President Glen Cromwell’s recent admission to Autoweek that the sanctioning body is exploring the idea of partnering with a sports betting company. But plenty of fans like the idea. And they include Lucas Oil Series Top Alcohol Dragster drivers Sean Bellemeur, Doug Gordon, Chris Marshall, and Shane Westerfield.

The four composed the final quartet of drivers to make qualifying runs in their class Saturday. And they decided to spice things up by making a friendly wager. Each contributed $1,000.

Although racers don’t compete with each other officially during qualifying – they compete only with their own potential and the scoreboard in their respective lanes – this time they wanted to be the first one to turn on the win light. The $4,000 prize went to the driver who got to the finish line first, regardless of what their elapsed times were. (With reaction times figured in, it’s possible a driver could have the quicker – or, in four-wide trim, the quickest – elapsed time but not cross the finish line first.)

So the four were simply having some fun among themselves with their winner-take-all wager.

Bellemeur won the loot and said at the top end, “That was awesome. We need to do more of this.” He said he felt the pressure to go for the win light and the money because his car hadn’t been performing the best thus far in qualifying. With his three colleagues standing beside him – and smiling, despite being out a grand apiece – he said, “I hope the NHRA takes a look at this and maybe does some more of this.”

Announcer Joe Castello said on the public-address system that his cell phone “was blowing up” with messages from fans saying they wanted to see more of that, that it was fun.

Bellemeur and the fans just might get their wish – but that’s not a safe bet yet.

Top Fuel’s Justin Ashley Pitches in for Ukraine Relief

Justin Ashley and 75 of his social-media followers have raised $30,000 in donations to the Ukrainian United Nations Crisis Relief Fund during the past two weeks.