Because of an early rain delay, additional time-outs to sop up water seeping through the crevices
on the track surface, and finally another rain shower, only one qualifying round was completed
today, making it a total of two for the weekend. Friday's action also suffered from a rain delay.
Ron Capps, in the NAPA AUTO PARTS Dodge Funny Car, failed to make the field in Friday's only
qualifying session and was hoping to have a chance to get at least one more shot today. It was an
iffy day, but in that one pass he was able to pull out a 4.208-second pass at 289.57 mph to vault
himself into the 12th spot for Sunday's eliminations. He will face Bob Tasca III in the opening
round.
"We got very lucky," said Capps, who is seeking to regain the class points lead this weekend. He's
second, 28 points behind Tony Pedregon. "NHRA did a great job getting the track ready. We had water
seeping up when the sun came up. There was so much rain last night, and when I left the pit area
last night there was a 92-percent chance of rain all day today, so it wasn't looking promising. To
be on the outside of the show looking in with a chance not to race on Sunday was intimidating.
We've got one of the longest qualifying streaks in Funny Car (56 straight events), and we wanted to
keep that going.
"It would have been heartbreaking if we hadn't been able to race on Sunday, but we got the session
in and we made the field. The NAPA guys did a great job. They always give Ace (crew chief Ed
McCulloch) a great car and it was a very conservative run, because we needed to just get down the
track. And I don't think lane choice should be a big deal on Sunday. We've seen what Ace can do on
race day, no matter what the car's done before eliminations.
"I feel good about improving on that 4.20 (-second elapsed time)."
