'When it's time, it's time:' Ron Capps finally wins US Nationals
BROWNSBURG — A thousand feet separated Ron Capps from his racing white whale. He had picked up 70 wins over a career spanning two decades, but none, despite several close calls, came at the US Nationals. Monday, he found himself in the finals for the second straight year. This time he needed to overcome Robert Hight to get the monkey off his back.
As Capps put his helmet on, his phone lit up. It was a text from Don “The Snake” Prudhomme. Prudhomme used to be Capps’ team owner, but before that he had a Hall of Fame career in drag racing. Capps grew up watching him, idolizing him, playing with the Prudhomme-licensed Hot Wheels toy cars.
“One more to go,” the message read. “Go get ‘em kid.”
Capps looked up from his phone at the arch in front of the starting line and, for a moment, got lost in the romanticism of competing at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, the site of so much heartbreak throughout his career.
“You go down the list of people that have won this that have never won much else,” he said. “There’s a lot of those instances where just crazy things have happened at Indy. It’s just Indy does that. So after last year, I said, ‘When it’s time, it’s time.’ It’s like the weather. I’m not gonna worry about. We’re gonna show up, and if Mother Nature says it’s gonna rain, it’s gonna rain. I just said, ‘When it’s time it’s gonna let me win.’”
Hight’s car fizzled out coming off the start line, making Capps’ winning sub-four-second run a moot point. The top qualifier from Sunday, Capps made it the first time the higher seed won every Funny Car race since adopting its current format.
Antron Brown, who Capps described as “like a brother,” won in the Top Fuel category.
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Capps didn't know Hight was far in his figurative rearview mirror less than a second into the race, unable to see his opponent in his peripheral vision as he drove. As Capps burned his way down the strip, he waited for Hight to edge in front of him, for his weekend in Brownsburg to be spoiled like it had so many times before.
Hight never came. Capps’ win light popped on. He couldn’t believe it. Moments later, he stood outside his car with tears in his eyes, having exorcised not just his US Nationals demons, but overcome a difficult first year as both a driver and team owner.
“If you had told me this in January when I was pulling my hair out and hunched over crying in a fetal position just about every night, wondering how I was gonna get through even to Pomona,” he said, “and you would have said I was gonna win a couple races and then win Indy and then win the whole shebang … Ron Capps Motorsports needed that badly.”
With the win, Capps moved into third place in the Funny Car standings. The season points will now reset when the playoffs begin with the NHRA Nationals in Mohnton, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 15.
In the short term, Capps will relish the victory. His wife’s birthday is Sept. 6, falling every year around US Nationals. For the first time, they’ll be able to celebrate both a birthday and a victory in Indiana.
At some point in the night, he has some phone calls he wants to make to various mentors in racing, people he knew were watching in the afternoon.
And, of course, to Snake Prudhomme, with whom he now shares the title of US Nationals champion.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: NHRA: Ron Capps defeats Robert HIght, wins US Nationals in Funny Car
