Three-time Funny Car world champion Ron Capps opened the 2026 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season in commanding fashion, securing the No. 1 qualifying position Saturday at the NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway.
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Capps powered his NAPA Auto Care Funny Car to the top of the field Friday night with a standout run of 3.890 seconds at 334.07 mph, a performance that held through Saturday\u2019s final two qualifying sessions in warm and humid conditions to earn the 38th No. 1 qualifier of his career and his third at the historic facility.
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As the only Funny Car team to clock a run in the 3.8-second range, and with their spot in the 16-car field secured after Friday night, crew chief Dean \u201cGuido\u201d Antonelli and the NAPA team used Saturday\u2019s sessions to gather data and prepare for Sunday\u2019s elimination rounds.
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\u201cOur NAPA team, we were quietly getting ready for this season,\u201d Capps said. \u201cWe were disappointed with how we ended last year, and we figured out the problem at the end of the season and what was going on with the car, and I could not wait to get here and sure enough, testing the first week and then Tuesday and Wednesday, the car flew, so we knew it was there.
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\u201cWe ran that 89 Friday night, and that allowed us today to push in what will be similar conditions tomorrow. First round, I bet we\u2019ll see the quickest runs we\u2019ve seen all weekend. Conditions are going to be better than they were Friday night, so if you get past that round, it\u2019ll turn out like today. There were a lot of 4.0s in the heat first round today and Guido was wanting to run a 3.96, and I was like oh if we do that, it\u2019ll be awesome, and the second run, he tried to run 95, so just seeing what the lanes will hold in those conditions if we can get far enough tomorrow. It\u2019s going to be huge moonshots in the morning, and anybody\u2019s game. It\u2019s been fun to see Guido in that whole mindset. It was a lot of hard work in the off-season, and we\u2019ll see what happens tomorrow.\u201d
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Securing the No. 1 qualifier award wasn\u2019t the only highlight of Capps\u2019 weekend. Before qualifying got underway, he announced the addition of Monster Energy to his Ron Capps Motorsports roster of partners and debuted as a multi-car team owner for the first time with 21-year-old rookie Maddi Gordon driving the Carlyle Tools Top Fuel dragster.
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\u201cI knew Maddi would be great, and it\u2019s been such a fun process over the two months we put this together,\u201d Capps said of his new teammate, who earned three bonus points for running low E.T. of the final Top Fuel session (3.797 seconds) and qualified 15th in her professional debut.
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\u201cWe knew that\u2019s what (crew chief) Rob Flynn was all about. It\u2019s just been baby steps, getting her laps, and when it\u2019s time to turn the wick up, he will. To be able to get down that track today, it was greasy and tricky, but she\u2019s so smooth. I only have to give her advice one time on something and she\u2019s like a sponge. She just picks it up right away. She just came out of an Alcohol Funny Car, and you have to drive the crap out of \u2018em. First day of testing we went over all the stuff I think about, and I had one little meeting with her and Rob, and she went out and did exactly everything we talked about, and it was really cool. She\u2019s an incredible talent and there\u2019s some things you just can\u2019t teach.\u201d
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Capps will face No. 16 qualifier John Smith on Sunday morning in the first round of eliminations as he pursues the first diamond Wally trophy up for grabs in honor of NHRA\u2019s 75th anniversary season. The 77-time national event winner will attempt to tie his former team owner Don Prudhomme\u2019s five victories at the historic venue when race day begins Sunday at 10 a.m. ET. Capps has seven prior final round appearances at Gainesville Raceway, including last year\u2019s runner-up finish.<\/p>\n
The post Ron Capps to Start Race Day from Pole Position at NHRA Season Opener<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three-time Funny Car world champion Ron Capps opened the 2026 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season in commanding fashion, securing the No. 1 qualifying position Saturday at the NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway.\u00a0Capps powered his NAPA Auto Care Funny Car to the top of the field Friday night with a standout run of 3.890 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}