Ron Capps: Move to Toyota Supra Means New NHRA Teammates, a Little Sharing

We were chomping at the bit to announce our deal with Toyota.

It was very exciting, knowing that they had the new body in the works. But to finally get it out and debut the Supra at the Circle K NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte a few weeks ago, that was huge for us in a lot of different ways.

I bragged about a big part of this whole new venture of owning my own team was having a manufacturer that wanted to be all-in as a partner and teammate. You have to remember for the last 17 years, I drove for a team and team owner Don Schumacher where most of the time I had several teammates right in our camp, in fact right next door.

So, as a new team owner/driver with a one-car team, I haven’t really had a teammate per se this year, although we are pitted in the same spot next to DSR. But up until our Toyota announcement at Charlotte, I haven’t had that same feeling like I’ve got teammates. At DSR over the past decade, there were times when we had four Funny Cars running out of our camp, so I had three teammates that I had to battle every week and also for a championship. And so the cool thing about finally getting the word out at Charlotte about the Toyota Supra was gaining new teammates at Toyota that I now have, especially in Funny Car.

Obviously, I've got a great running car in the Supra, but the cool thing was the help we got from JR Todd’s Toyota team—I’ve always been really close with that team, their crew chiefs. Then there's the other Toyota Funny Car driver, Alexis DeJoria. Del Worsham runs that team and I’ve been really close with Alexis and Del. Crew chiefs Jon Oberhofer and Nicky Boninfante were huge in us unloading the car, too.

You have to remember, I had never even sat in the Supra before, and here we are debuting it at a huge media event on Thursday of the Charlotte race. I had never even sat in this car. Our crew chiefs had never run this car down the track, and then we put the Supra body on it and went 3.87 seconds, over 330 mph, the very first run. I can’t tell you how hard that is to do. They made it look easy.

The input we’ve had from our new teammates and Slugger Labbe and the all the people at Toyota was huge, and not just for me as a driver. I did talk to JR and Alexis, as the new car is different to see out of than what I'm used to.

The cool part was seeing the input from Del Worsham and the DHL team in making us feel at ease in taking the car out for the very first run, knowing that all eyes were on us. We had a great car already, but now Supra is on the car and we certainly didn’t want to disappoint. So that was immense pressure I felt. Our crew chief Guido Antonelli said he didn’t feel the pressure, but I think he was lying a little bit.