Three-time NHRA Funny Car world champion Ron Capps kept the momentum from the strong start to his 2026 campaign rolling at the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals, taking his NAPA Auto Care Funny Car to the provisional No. 1 spot Friday night under the lights at zMAX Dragway. Capps clocked a session-best 3.883 E.T. at 333.91 mph during Q2 to land at the top of the timing sheets heading into Saturday qualifying.<\/p>\n
The Dean \u201cGuido\u201d Antonelli-led team opened the weekend at the season\u2019s lone four-wide event with a stout 3.988-second run at 321.65 mph in the heat of the day to place fourth in the qualifying order. By the time the NAPA team returned to the starting line for the day\u2019s second session, they had been bumped back to ninth. With conditions continuing to improve, Antonelli turned up the wick, tuning Capps\u2019 machine to what was only the second 3.8-second run of the round, earning three bonus points in the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is classic zMAX,\u201d said Capps, who entered the fourth race of the 2026 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series tied for first place in the Funny Car standings after earning a No. 1 qualifier in Gainesville, Fla., a win in Phoenix, and a runner-up finish at the most recent event in Pomona, Calif. \u201cOpening session, there was a little humidity and the track was fresh, but you still saw great runs. This place is always good, and when the sun goes down, it\u2019s great. So, we started seeing the good numbers ahead of us during Q2 and I could hear Guido on the radio ask \u201cT Buck\u201d (assistant crew chief Tom Buckingham) \u2018what did they run?\u2019 and he said 3.89. Guido came right back to the box, opened it up, and was in there for a minute and a half, and I just knew, he\u2019s getting after it.\u201d<\/p>\n
With two more qualifying sessions scheduled for Saturday, Capps is unsure if his run will hold strong to earn the 39th No. 1 qualifier of his career but has nothing but confidence in his NAPA team as they prepare to go to battle in the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge before Sunday\u2019s elimination rounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so fortunate I get to race with Guido,\u201d he added. \u201cObviously, everyone saw what we did in Phoenix; that\u2019s as tough as it gets, especially after we had the explosion. You look at that, and all that we\u2019ve accomplished so far this season, and we\u2019re only four races in. Guido can throw down with the best of them. It\u2019s really cool to have a crew chief who can adapt to anything. Usually, you have one who\u2019s really good at tricky conditions, or one who\u2019s really good in Disneyland conditions, but Guido\u2019s good in all conditions, and that\u2019s very rare.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s looking like we\u2019ll get some cloud cover tomorrow, so I\u2019m not sure if this No. 1 will stick; it depends on the humidity and the heat, but we\u2019ve got lane choice in the Mission Challenge, and we\u2019ll be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Qualifying for the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway resumes at 12:30 p.m. ET on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The post Capps Clinches Provisional Funny Car Pole at NHRA 4-Wide Nationals<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three-time NHRA Funny Car world champion Ron Capps kept the momentum from the strong start to his 2026 campaign rolling at the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals, taking his NAPA Auto Care Funny Car to the provisional No. 1 spot Friday night under the lights at zMAX Dragway. Capps clocked a session-best 3.883 E.T. at 333.91 mph […]<\/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-103453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103453","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=103453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}