Ron Capps held on to his No. 1 qualifying position that he earned in last night's cool qualifying round, a track-record-breaking and career-best 4.694-second elapsed time, at 327.82 mph. This was his first No. 1 qualifier of the season, the seventh of his career, and the first since Brainerd of 2000.
Today's two qualifying rounds for the O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex in warmer temperatures under a Texas fall sun produced a tire-smoking 14.795/76.18 and a 5.044/232.71.
Capps and Brut Dodge Stratus R/T Funny Car crew chief Ed "Ace" McCulloch were not dismayed, as they used these mid-day runs as test sessions for conditions expected on race day.
In the midst of a tight NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car championship race, Capps moved into second place in the rankings by out-qualifying John Force. The California native is now three points ahead of Force, and 41 behind teammate and leader Gary Scelzi.
"If we're getting hot right now, we picked a good time for it," he said. "It is just adaptation - which crew chief can adapt tomorrow to conditions getting warmer A lot of us struggled today, but tomorrow we'll probably have the same conditions in the first round that we had in the middle of the day today.
"It seems like a home game, so to speak, when conditions warm up for me with Ace as a crew chief.
"I feel pretty confident. We'll just see what happens tomorrow.
"Numbers-wise, we passed Force for the moment with just enough points in qualifying. It shows you just how important every little, tiny point can be. The object is not to get cocky about any of it, keep level-headed and just be optimistic, but a little bit confident.
"The confidence (on our team) is awesome. We're the back of the pack every session (having qualified well in the previous round). You're able to watch the cars go down the track. It's key right now. It's huge, and we tested the edge of that cliff on that last run, just to see what it would hold down there, and we found out it wouldn't hold what we would throw at it. It was on a good run, probably would have been low ET of that session."
Capps faces No. 16 qualifier Jack Wyatt in the first round of eliminations on Sunday and is on the same side of the ladder as Scelzi.
