When Ron Capps lifted the car cover off of his Don “The Snake” Prudhomme Army tribute car at an NHRA press conference on Wednesday afternoon, he kicked off another tribute campaign to his former team owner that he hopes will end up in the winner’s circle again on Monday at this weekend’s 70th annual Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals. The unveiling came just a few days shy of one year after Capps won his second consecutive U.S. Nationals title with a special Hot Wheels “Snake and Mongoose”-themed livery on his NAPA Auto Parts Toyota GR Supra.
Last year’s tribute car, which recognized the 50th anniversary of Prudhomme’s Funny Car win at the 1973 U.S. Nationals, required a long approval process through Capps’s primary sponsor, NAPA, as well as Mattel, the parent company of Hot Wheels. The popularity of Capps’ “Snake” tribute car throughout the 2023 U.S. Nationals weekend, as well as through the months after it won with Prudhomme in attendance, made it that much easier to get NAPA’s approval again to bring out the Army-inspired car.
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“For [NAPA] to do what they did last year was amazing; same for this year,” said Capps, a three-time world champion. “I called Katherine [Wooten] there and gave her the history of this car like I did with the Hot Wheels car. I sent her everything. It was like I gave her an education on our sport’s history. She didn’t know much about the history of the Hot Wheel cars or the Army car, but they’ve seen how much the Hot Wheels car touched the fans. I’ve had people running into me in the airport out of the blue, teared up, saying how much that car meant to them.”
With the Hot Wheels car last year being so tied to the historic milestone, Capps didn’t intend to run it again. He did toy with the idea of running it against a matching Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen tribute car at some point this year, an idea he pitched to John Force late last year.
“I was at the banquet at the end of the year and Force and I were standing in the corner talking. I said, ‘You need to do a Mongoose car and I’ll do the Snake car again and we’ll run maybe Norwalk Night Under Fire,” Capps said. “He was thinking about it, and in his head, he’s trying to figure out his sponsors and how he could pull it off. He brought it back up to me at a race earlier this year. It’d be fun. The Mongoose, I was pretty tight with him, so [a tribute car] would be something pretty cool.”
Capps, an avid fan of many other types of motorsports, points out that NASCAR has a special throwback weekend on its schedule, where teams pay tribute to former drivers and liveries at Darlington Raceway. Could NHRA have something similar? Capps thinks so.
“I think we have better cars to choose from than NASCAR has for tributes,” Capps said. “When we were kids, we’d build the Snake and the Mongoose models and play with the Hot Wheels cars. You had Jungle Jim and Big Daddy and Ed ‘The Ace’ McCulloch and the ‘Revellution’ and all these cars you could choose from.”
After the incredible on-track and off-track success of the Hot Wheels car last year, Capps wasn’t so sure about bringing out another throwback look for this year’s 70th running of the U.S. Nationals. If he did another one, it would need to have a similar historical significance. Enter Prudhomme’s patriotic Army car, which made its debut 50 years ago in 1974. Prudhomme wore the red, white, and blue colors for one of the most significant stretches of his driving career.
“It was 50 years ago when he first started campaigning this car that went on an onslaught,” Capps said. “I think it won all but two races one year and all but one race the next year. It was insane. It was more than just running a tribute car. It was the history part for me.”
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With designs inspired by two of the most iconic Funny Cars in drag racing history, Capps set the bar high with his first two tribute cars. He can’t say for sure whether or not he’ll do one next year or some other time down the road, but he has no shortage of ideas for drivers or cars he’d recognize with another throwback look.
“I grew up loving Funny Cars and Fuel Altereds, so I could name you a list of cars I’d love to do,” Capps said. “My next favorite car would be – because I got to work with him and he’s one of my heroes – Ed McCulloch’s car. Definitely the ‘Revellution’ more than any of them. The ‘Jungle Jim’ car, I’ve done a lot of nostalgia racing and they’ve got those out there. The Blue Max car, I got to drive Del [Worsham’s], which is as close to the real car, when I drove his nostalgia car. So those are the cars – Ace, Jungle, and [Raymond] Beadle – that are at the top of my head besides the Snake and the Mongoose and the Army car.”
This story was originally published on August 29, 2024.
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