Ron Capps and the NAPA Auto Care Funny Car team secured their fourth No. 1 qualifier of the season Saturday at Rockingham Dragway, locking down the top spot for Sunday\u2019s NHRA Nationals at The Rock eliminations on the strength of Capps\u2019 3.870-second pass at 330.40 mph from Friday night.
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Capps, who entered the second race of the six-event NHRA Countdown to the Championship ranked fourth in the Funny Car standings, was strong throughout all four qualifying sessions. The three-time world champion collected five bonus points on Friday after clocking the second-quickest pass of the opening session (3.926) before powering to the provisional No. 1 position under the lights in Q2.
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Returning Saturday, Capps and his Dean \u2018Guido\u2019 Antonelli-led team continued their consistency. Capps opened the day with a clean 3.960-second pass at 326.56 mph before closing qualifying with another stout run, a 3.927 at 330.15, that ranked third-quickest of the final session and added another bonus point to his weekend tally.
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\u201cIt was quite a bit warmer than yesterday,\u201d said Capps, who secured the 41st No. 1 qualifier of his career Saturday. \u201cWe watched the two cars ahead of us go side-by-side 3.93s and then for us to go 3.92 was pretty impressive considering how much it warmed up. Great job by Guido and our NAPA team getting down the track both runs today.\u201d
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With only 15 Funny Cars competing this weekend, earning the No. 1 starting position also comes with an added advantage. Capps will receive a first-round bye on Sunday, all but guaranteeing the NAPA team 20 valuable round-win points before facing the winner of the opening-round matchup between current Funny Car points leader Matt Hagan and Dave Richards in the quarterfinals.
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\u201cThe points are still pretty bunched up, so to have that bye run tomorrow is huge,\u201d added Capps, who entered the weekend 63 points out of first. \u201cWe gave up some ground in Michigan, and we\u2019re just putting that weekend behind us. To come here and gain six bonus points overall is important. Before I won my first championship, I lost three championships by six points or less, so I understand how monumental those points are.
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\u201cWe know tomorrow will be close to the same conditions as today, maybe even a little warmer. We made it down all four runs here, which is impressive, and I\u2019m really proud of Guido and our guys for what they\u2019ve done so far this weekend.\u201d
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Capps will continue his pursuit of a fourth Funny Car world title when eliminations get underway at 11 a.m. ET Sunday.<\/p>\n
The post Ron Capps Earns Fourth No. 1 Qualifier of 2026 at Rockingham<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ron Capps and the NAPA Auto Care Funny Car team secured their fourth No. 1 qualifier of the season Saturday at Rockingham Dragway, locking down the top spot for Sunday\u2019s NHRA Nationals at The Rock eliminations on the strength of Capps\u2019 3.870-second pass at 330.40 mph from Friday night.\u00a0Capps, who entered the second race of […]<\/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-104890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104890","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=104890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}