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<\/p>\nThree-time Funny Car world champion Ron Capps opened the 2026 NHRA Countdown to the Championship with a career-best speed of 339.37 mph in the NAPA Auto Care Funny Car during Monday eliminations at the inaugural NHRA Great Lakes Nationals at U.S. 131 Motorsports Park. Capps paired the milestone speed with a 3.859-second pass to defeat Chad Green in the opening round before tire smoke ended his day in the quarterfinals. The early exit moved Capps from second to fourth in the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Funny Car standings after the first of six playoff races.<\/p>\n
Capps and crew chief Dean \u2018Guido\u2019 Antonelli quickly acclimated to the unfamiliar track surface, as Capps used a 3.947-second pass at 331.13 mph to charge to the provisional No. 4 spot in the first qualifying session. He improved to a 3.930 E.T. at 326.80 mph in Friday\u2019s second session to go into Saturday in the No. 7 position. Tire shake followed in the third qualifying session, but Capps bounced back in the final qualifying session with his quickest pass of the weekend to that point, a 3.899-second pass at 336.07 mph.<\/p>\n
Capps went into Sunday eliminations in the No. 7 spot ready to take on Chad Green, but persistent rain forced NHRA officials to postpone eliminations to Monday morning. The wait was worth it for Capps, who set a new career-best speed with his 3.859-second pass at 339.37 mph to defeat Green. In the second round, Capps moved first against past world champion Jack Beckman, but he lost traction almost as soon as he hit the throttle, while Beckman advanced to the semifinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a great track to start the Countdown to the Championship with,\u201d said Capps, who now sits just over three competition rounds out of first place. \u201cEven when it was raining, the fans kept pouring in. And then with the rainout, we came back to run the finals today on Monday and still had a huge crowd. So, that was pretty cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always brag about Guido being able to adapt to different conditions, and we saw that this weekend. Every qualifying session seemed to have different conditions. We did a good job of qualifying, and I ran the top speed of my career first round today. Unfortunately, we went out second round, but the good thing is, we\u2019re headed to Rockingham in a few days, another track where a lot of racers haven\u2019t been before. I have some good memories there from early in my career, so I\u2019m looking forward to going back and really excited for all the drivers, like Maddi, who have never raced there and have only heard the stories. I think a lot of the racers are going to be surprised by the fanbase there. We\u2019ve got a lot of guests coming out, and a surprise partner coming on board with NAPA Auto Parts next weekend. We\u2019re looking forward to it and I can\u2019t wait to see all the fans at Thurday night\u2019s Fanfest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NHRA Countdown to the Championship continues Sept. 25-27 at the inaugural NHRA Nationals at The Rock at Rockingham Dragway in Rockingham, North Carolina. Like U.S. 131 Motorsports Park, Rockingham is a new stop on the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series schedule.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published on September 22, 2026. <\/p>\n
The post Ron Capps Sets New Career-Best Speed at NHRA Great Lakes Nationals<\/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 Countdown to the Championship with a career-best speed of 339.37 mph in the NAPA Auto Care Funny Car during Monday eliminations at the inaugural NHRA Great Lakes Nationals at U.S. 131 Motorsports Park. Capps paired the milestone speed with a 3.859-second pass to defeat […]<\/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-104850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104850","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=104850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}