5/1/06

In the end, John missed his first win of the year the way every driver dreads losing a final round. On a hole shot.

What made matters worse was that his loss to Ron Capps in the Bristol final gave Capps a psychological boost and, of course, added some extra bulk to his points lead. John remains in second place in the standings, but that’s not where he likes being, especially when the consistency of Ron Capps and his team this year has been very Force-like. How else would you describe the fact that Ron has been to every final round but one this year and has three wins—in only six races. That’s the kind of start to a season we’ve seen John ring up on numerous occasions, but this year, he’s still looking for Victory #1 as the Southern Nationals in Atlanta roll into view next weekend.

Eric did a fine job in qualifying this weekend, qualifying No.1 and winning Rounds 1 and 2, and even he had a chance to torpedo Capps in the second round, but in a sensationally close race, Capps beat Eric by the slimmest of margins—1/100 of a second on the elapsed time clocks—and that eventually led to John’s final round meeting with the Brut team.

John now knows how General Custer must have felt at Little Big Horn since the semi-final combatants were him and the three Schumacher Racing drivers. Gary Scelzi was paired with Capps and John had to face his relentless rival, Whit Bazemore. John beat Whit and did so with another pass in the mid-4.70’s, where John spent all of eliminations. In fact, it wasn’t until the final round that Capps put up a run in the 4.70’s but John’s uncharacteristically late .104 reaction time gave Ron too much of a head start.

Robert didn’t have a very joyous weekend either. He lost in the opening round to Phil Burkart in a pedaling match past the eighth-mile mark. All in all, the only really good news that the team took out of Bristol was that John ran quickly and consistently enough to win, but got bitten by the Hole Shot Bug in the finale.

Work continues with John’s reality television show due to premier on A&E on Monday, July 17 @ 9pm, “Driving Force”. It is a major undertaking to coordinate and produce this type of television series and John says he and his wife, Laurie, and his three daughters Ashley, Courtney and Brittany are getting an education into the amount of effort and energy it requires to be involved in such a project. I for one can’t wait to see the first episode and I have a feeling there are many, many more drag racing fans who are anticipating the new series just as much.

It appears at this point that anyone who assumed that Ron Capps’ early-season surge was a passing fluke assumed wrong. Is there a weakness in his game? Overall, not many, but it is interesting that performance-wise, Capps has yet to card any really awesome elapsed times or speeds. Might this be something that Team Castrol could use to its advantage as the season progresses? It may be the one area that they can exploit, but you can’t lose sight of the fact that Capps continues to win rounds, beat the best cars in the class, and refuses to beat himself. After he beat Gary Scelzi in the semi-finals on Sunday, a member of Goodyear’s technical crew working at the top end asked me, “When was the last time he smoked his tires?” It’s a pretty graphic example of just how steady the performance has been on the Brut team when a tire engineer can’t recall something like that.

And so, the chase will continue next week in Atlanta and JFR will be hoping to turn the tide of the 2006 POWERade Funny Car headwaters after a near-victory in Bristol.

I hope you’ll follow my NHRA commentary on ESPN.com and catch me on “Inside Drag Racing” every Sunday morning at 11AM EDT on ESPN2.

Come on back here next week!

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