Think a Drag Racer Can Break NASCAR Drivers’ Hold on SRX?

• NAPA Toyota team owner Ron Capps is the first drag racer to make SRX grid.

• The three-time Funny Car champion has circle-track experience.

• August 10 race at Eldora Speedway is on the eve of the next NHRA event.

Ron Capps has ridden out several fiery engine explosions at Brainerd (Minnesota), Dallas, Pomona (California), and Sonoma (Calif.). He has hung upside down at Indianapolis, trapped inside his Funny Car with its extruding body latches tangled in the catch fence at the end of the dragstrip. He even joked “I think I pooped my pants” following a near-collision on race day at Norwalk, Ohio.

Just strapping into an 11,000-horsepower, nitromethane-gulping monster of a race car—and being able to tame it for three championships and 74 victories (sixth-best in the 70-year history of the sport in any pro class)—is reason enough to fear nothing.

Still, the NHRA team owner of the NAPA Toyota Supra said he’s a bit apprehensive about his August 10 return to Eldora Speedway.

At the midpoint of the Camping World SRX (Superstar Racing Experience) Series’ third season, Capps will become the first drag racer to compete with headliners from various other motorsports series (unless we count SRX co-owner and co-founder Tony Stewart, who already has a trophy in the NHRA’s Top Alcohol Dragster class).

Capps has raced on the iconic half-mile clay oval at Rossburg, Ohio, before, in a similar invitational “Prelude To The Dream” all-star-style show. He has tested in an IROC car and an SCRA sprint car, and he has raced in the prestigious Chili Bowl Midget Nationals at Tulsa. Still, he said, “I’m nervous. As the days get closer, I’m more and more nervous.

“We’re going to race at Eldora, where I raced dirt cars before with Tony Stewart—although a lot different. I’m going to approach it like I did at Eldora, driving the Prelude, and that was to try to bring somebody else’s equipment back the best I possibly can,” he said. “I’m surely going to try to win. You’ve got to remember we’re up against the best race-car drivers in the world in all different categories.”

Capps confessed that he was a bit intimidated when he tested earlier this year at a small racetrack in North Carolina.