Ron Capps: NHRA Brainerd Is the Old School When It Comes to Racing

• This week, the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series is at the Brainerd (Minn.) International Raceway for the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals.

• Two-time NHRA champion and Autoweek insider Ron Capps says the Branerd stop is one his favorite on the circuit.

• After all, it's not every track that has a fan camping area known as "The Zoo" and a "Capps Corner" in its infield, complete with it's own Facebook page.

I wouldn't be where I am today, none of this would happened, if it wasn't for Brainerd. Everything kind of started in Brainerd when I was a crew person, just a crew guy on a dragster.

It's where I met team owner John Mitchell, and he's the one that gave me my first shot at getting my drag racing license. I decided to go on the road to see the country and to hit some races and be a crew member.

It was 1993, and it was during an oil down. I was in the staging lanes, and just some old guy started talking to me. I thought he was a crew member on another dragster, and it turned out it was Mitchell, an owner of two dragsters. And so the next day, he came up to me, and we just had a great conversation.

And he said, "You know, if you want to get your license in my dragster, just fly up to Montana and we'll do it." That's kind of how it went, and I got my license. I drove his car, and it was in his car that I got seen by Roger Primm, and then I got that deal. And then it was in that car that Don Prudhomme saw me.

So it was just this kind of chain reaction.

Ever since then, Brainerd has been special to me. Plus, my wife's family is from this whole area. So we get tons of her family to come around. I've never argued with whatever it is about this place. I just seem to do well here.

The community here has really embraced me, too, and it goes both ways. It's so funny because some teams or drivers for the longest time just would not go near "The Zoo." There were some owners that told their crew members they were not allowed to go anywhere into The Zoo or even the campground area.

I learned early on what makes this place so special. This race is some place that I tell people when they ask—whether they're flying in from overseas or wherever in the world—they ask what race should I go to if I've never been to one?

Brainerd is always the first one I tell them.

The fans love it in The Zoo. But when I started going out there, just hanging out a little bit—not getting crazy, but spending some time out there with the fans after hours—I became part of their family, I guess. And then the ultimate was having a corner named after me, the "Capps Corner."

When I was a crew guy when I first started out, there was "Budweiser Corner" back in the day and it was dedicated to Kenny Bernstein, it was their deal. It was such a cool thing to have. But when they came out and created Capps Corner, it was like man, I'm really at the big time now!"

Yeah, I think it's like IndyCar guys probably talk about Elkhart Lake, and some of these other tracks that are old school—in a lot of ways, tracks that remind people what racing used to be like.

That's what makes Brainerd so special."

Editor's Note: Ron Capps, 57, is a two-time and defending NHRA Funny Car champion originally from San Luis Obispo, California, now residing in Carlsbad. This year, the driver of the NAPA Toyota Supra Funny Car is fulfilling a lifelong dream of owning his own team, as he moves from Don Schumacher Racing to Ron Capps Motorsports. Capps will be letting Autoweek readers inside the ropes with NHRA columns and to write about his transition to owner/driver throughout the 2022 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing season.