How the Little Things Came Together for Ron Capps on NHRA Father's Day at Bristol

• Defending NHRA Funny Car champion and new team owner/driver Ron Capps is coming off a weekend to remember.

• After qualifying his NAPA Toyota Supra GR a modest ninth, Capps drove to the win at the Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol, Tennessee.

• The win was his second of the season, first in his new Toyota Camry and 70th of his NHRA career. It came on Father's Day and one day before Capps celebrated his 57th birthday.

That’s six now that I’ve won at Bristol. Anytime you’ve won an NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series event at some place more than John Force, that’s a pretty good deal. He's got four there.

Except for last year, when the event got moved because of COVID to October, our race at Bristol has always been on Father's Day weekend. So, I've won a few times on Fathers Day. I’ve brought the Trophy home a few times to my dad. My birthday is on the 20th, and I think the the last time I won there, I think it was actually on my birthday and Father’s Day.

My family wasn't at the Bristol race this year. They haven't been in a long while. My wife went a long time ago, but it’s usually just me. Everyone else is back in California, and the way Father's Day goes, you kind of wait for them to get up and send me the 'Happy Father’s Day' messages on race day. And then we kind of have a thing where we don’t talk throughout the day. It’s kind of a ritual.

It’s not really lonely, but it's kind of weird not having the family there. I always fly home on Monday, even with back-to-back race weekends. It’s always cool knowing we’re going to do a belated birthday and Father's Day, which we did on Monday night.

Sometimes You Don't See It Coming

There’s some weekends when things aren't going your way and where you start looking at flights out on a Sunday night.

In your head, you’re thinking, ‘Maybe I should just check options.’ Sometimes, there’s just some weekends you just have little things thrown at you, and that’s just part of the challenge of NHRA. You put nitro in the fuel tank, and that’s just the nature of the beast.

We had plenty thrown at us at Bristol.

Our last qualifying run, we had a small issue with a parachute. It came out of one of the packs early, which is a product of that Bristol track. It’s definitely the bumpiest on our tour. It creates a lot of havoc for a lot of teams.

And so, to know that even though we qualified ninth and didn’t have lane choice and that we just had probably our worst qualifying of the season, we just knew that we were on a good run before we had that issue. We were hoping that it was going to transfer over to Sunday.

You hope, but you kind of know.

And sure enough, obviously it did. We were low ET of the first round of eliminations. We knew the potential was there. We’ve been working on, messaging this Toyota body since we got it.

One great thing about having our crew chiefs John Medlen and Guido Antonelli on our team is that they’ve spent a lot of time in the past working with bodies and with other teams and wind tunnels. At Toyota, we work with the other Toyota Funny Car team with Del Worsham, Alexis DeJoria and JR Todd. And we work with Slugger Labbe, who’s an old NASCAR crew chief. He's been in charge of this Toyota Supra body since the beginning. They work real well with our guys.