NHRA Funny Car Champ Capps Waiting for 'Dale Earnhardt Daytona Moment'

• Capps has 69 Funny Car victories but none from the sport’s most-heralded event.

• Capps says he’s waiting for his ‘Dale Earnhardt Daytona moment’.

• He’s the reigning series champion and a 28-year veteran.

Every NHRA drag racer says if he or she could win just one race, ideally it would be the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis.

Reigning Funny Car champion Ron Capps has two series championships and 70 victories, 69 in his current class and an early-career one in Top Fuel. His collection of Funny Car trophies is second in size only to 155-time winner John Force. But none of those trophies in his Carlsbad, Calif., home display case has a “U.S. Nationals” nameplate on it.

That would make the NAPA Toyota Supra owner-driver the most decorated active driver never to have won the sport’s most prized “Wally” statue (which was named for NHRA founder Wally Parks).

The 28-year veteran, who turned 57 in June, said back in 2017, “I’m waiting for my Dale Earnhardt Daytona moment,” referring to the seven-time NASCAR champ who scored his Daytona 500 triumph on his 20th attempt. I’ve had some great cars at times, some great chances to win, and I’ve had some close calls or something weird happens. It’s heartbreaking, because you have to wait a whole year to try again.”

That was the year he recorded his first of two U.S. Nationals runner-up finishes. The other came last year against Tim Wilkerson, the driver he challenged Saturday as his opponent in the Pep Boys All-Star Call-Out $80,000-to-win bonus race that will take place during Sunday qualifying.

When the pandemic forced the NHRA to rearrange its 2020 schedule, Capps won one of four races at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park. But it wasn’t “The Big Go.”

Capps stepped out from the shadows of past team bosses Don Schumacher and Don Prudhomme this past December to operate his own team. And he said that would highlight this first year as an independent operator: “I’ve won at the racetrack before, but never actually won the U.S. Nationals. So, I’d love nothing more than to make that another first this year.”

Capps started this weekend’s Dodge Power Brokers U.S. Nationals in jeopardy of missing the 16-car field altogether. His lone Friday run was disqualified because he tagged the guard wall.

Citing prime weather and track conditions, Capps said he “just styed in it too long. It was going to the right. I wasn’t sure if a cylinder was out. Just a dumb move, you know? I don’t normally do stuff like that. You see the finish line, and you’re trying to get there. Things happen so fast you can’t sometimes say, ‘Hmm, should I do this or should I do that?’ You don’t have time. I know that I’m better than that. But again, it’s Indy. It’s the Big Go. You try to squeeze everything you can out of it. Just dumb – dumb, dumb, dumb.”

That just shows how badly he wants to excel at this venue. He did climb onto the grid early Saturday at the provisional No. 10 spot and improved to No. 4 by day’s end. He had two more chances in the year’s longest event to move even higher in the starting lineup. Eliminations are scheduled to start Monday morning.

However he fares in eliminations, Capps is looking ahead to how the seeding for the Countdown to the Championship will go. Monday’s results will determine that, and the six-race Countdown will open with the Sept. 16-18 Pep Boys Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway near Reading, Pa.

“It’s time to start thinking about the championship and our title defense,” Capps said, “and that starts [with] the U.S. Nationals. It’s the last race you can collect points to have an opportunity to move up to start the Countdown.”