Ron Capps, Drag-Racing Royalty, Looks Back On A Storied Career

Ron Capps is a superstar in the motorsports niche called drag racing. His 74 Funny Car win tally is second only to another NHRA superstar, John Force.

To those who don't know much about drag racing, NHRA participants regularly take their 12,000-hp cars to more than 330 mph in less than four seconds on a 1,000-ft. strip of asphalt. Think about that, and the G-forces involved on the human body in such a short period of time. Brutal.

Capps is 59 now, and the brutality doesn't seem to have affected him that much. He shows few signs of slowing down, pun intended. At this point in the 2024 season with just two races to go, he is in fourth place in the Funny Car national championship fight.

We caught up with Capps earlier this month for some perspective on his storied career, and on the challenges of drag racing in general. Following are edited excerpts from a longer conversation.

Jim Clash: After three decades of hard-core drag racing, you must have experienced some real wear and tear on your body?

Ron Capps: Yeah, I'm beat up, just back from getting my back and neck worked on. It's a weekly thing now. I've been driving Top Fuel Dragsters and Funny Cars for 30 years pulling more G's than the Space Shuttle pilots experience, then negative nine or 10 when the parachutes come out at 335 mph [to slow us]. So there's a lot going on that will, and does, take its toll. But it's a pretty good job to have [laughs].

: Explain in layman's terms what it's like to take a car from 0 to 335 mph in less than four seconds.

: It's hard to explain. You go from 0 to 100 mph from a standing start, and that takes less than a second! So all of you enthusiasts out there with your Porsches, hot GR Supras, muscle cars - think about that. Plus we achieve that 100 mph in just 60 feet. Only thing with comparable G's is a fighter jet.

: There are two main divisions in the NHRA - Top Fuel Dragsters and Funny Cars. You mostly drive Funny Cars. Where does that odd name come from?

: In the late fifties, early sixties, hot-rodders produced these rail-jobs, going to junkyards and pulling old engines out of cars and sticking them in home-built rails of tubing. Then they'd go out and almost kill themselves on a drag strip. Well, somebody came up with the idea to also take a body from a junkyard and put it on the same dragster frame. But it wouldn't line up where the engine compartment was, so it set back a little.

You had to cut another wheel well out to make room for the wheel. So the first Funny Cars were just car bodies stuck on a dragster frame with the body sticking off the back with this awkwardly-cut area for the rear tires. It looked funny. Some announcer somewhere said, "Here comes a Funny Car," a crazy thing for fans to watch at the time. And it just stuck. The rest is history.

: Funny Cars and Top Fuel Dragsters, you've driven both. Which is tougher?

: Funny Cars are definitely more difficult. They have a much shorter wheelbase. Both have the same 12,000-hp engines - not 1,200 like exotic cars, but 12,000! The Top Fuel Dragster is 300 inches long, flexible with a lot of tubing in the front. Basically, it's long and skinny with the engine in the back, and therefore more forgiving overall. The Funny Car is only about 125 inches long with the engine in front and a fiberglass body on top. It's very evil handling.

With the short wheelbase, you don't know where it's going to go. You're out of control at all times, even when you make a straight run. When you hit the gas, it to go left or right, or maybe the engine blows up. Again in Top Fuel, when it blows, the engine is behind you. In the Funny Car, it's a few feet in front of you. Just crazy.

: Given all of that, I'm sure you've been in some horrific accidents.

: When you Google my name, the first things that come up are crashes and fires. I've been very lucky - no broken bones, no missing limbs, no scars from fire. We are the fastest motorsport in the world, but I think the safest. The fire suits I wear compared to other racing series are at least four times thicker because of fire potential, and the gloves and the boots we wear over our shoes are three times thicker. Everything is magnified fire protection-wise.

: What goes through your mind during a crash?

: Most of the time you don't even know. The last explosion we had at Seattle this year was like a bomb. It took me a second to realize what was happening. First, there was hot oil that burned me. Then, when I could see, I saw the sun. It's never a good thing in a Funny Car when all of sudden it's open and you see things around you. The body is gone [laughs]. I could see trees, the sky, and I thought, "This is not good." Now remember, I'm still going more than 200 mph. You try to get your wits about you, react the best you can to stop without getting hurt.

Then there's the potential of getting into the person next to you. You know they are somewhere over there in the other lane. Yeah, with most of the big wrecks I've had it just happen, and you're along for the ride. If a driver tells you, "I had control, I did this and I did that," don't believe him. Most of the time, we're just hanging on for dear life.