6/26/06

Now, the fun begins..............

The second half of the season is now underway and after 12 races, 48 rounds of eliminations and battling through the atmospheric extremes of a cold, rainy Joliet to the scorching heat of Englishtown, NJ, only 44 points separate John and Ron Capps.

Everyone else clear the dance floor.

I’ve been saying all along—at least since Atlanta--the 2006 POWERade championship will go to either of those two drivers. If you’re visiting this website and reading this column, we already know where your loyalties lie, but objectively speaking, both John and Ron have all the necessary tools to earn the title.

John—a 13-time champion leading the sport’s premier team highlighted by the two men recognized as the very best tuners in drag racing: Austin Coil and Bernie Fedderly—flanked by John Medlen and Jimmy Prock.

Ron, a sure-handed veteran who brings enthusiasm, emotion, and an insatiable hunger for his first championship to the game, tuned by the legendary Ed “The Ace” McCulloch—a consensus Hall of Famer.

Here are two drivers who seem to be swapping the good fortune and nasty luck. The last two weeks offer pretty compelling evidence. In E-town, John loses in Round 2, Ron wins the race. On Sunday, Ron falls in the opening round; John goes to the final round and nearly beats Tony Pedregon. If not for a pesky blower belt getting tossed, John would be only 24 points behind Capps, but with 11 races remaining on the schedule, 24 is only slightly better than 44.

Last week in E-town, I was talking to Austin down in the Technology Center trailer and we were discussing how the Castrol Mustang has recently been losing its blower belts a bit more frequently than it has in the past. In fact, looking over the past 17 years since John began winning championships with Austin, blower belts have rarely been pitched on any of John’s racecars. Austin and Bernie aren’t quite sure why it’s happening more than it has, but the important thing to remember (which any nitro crew chief will tell you) is that it’s usually a symptom of something else going wrong in the engine when the belt comes off—not a direct malfunction of the belt, pulleys, or the installation of them.

Whatever the reason, now is not a good time to be trying to unravel a blower belt mystery. At the risk of overstating the obvious, every round win is incalculably valuable from here on out. With the Western Swing now coming up on the schedule, with stops in Denver, Seattle, and Sonoma in a three week stretch, the championship picture will almost assuredly come a bit more into focus by the time it’s over. Not only JFR, but every team will be fighting the effects of three crucial races in three weeks, fatigue, absence from home, and all of the other obstacles which have made the Swing such a daunting presence over the years. How the points standings look following Sonoma could reflect a significant change from how they look now, and despite my educated guess that John and Ron will be the principal players for this year’s Funny Car crown, you can’t entirely rule out any one of the other drivers in the top ten suddenly getting hot out west and making a move on the category leaders.

But all of that is simply guesswork right now. Something of a more pressing nature which we’ll have to confront is the reality that we’ll be without another NHRA national event until the middle of July! But John’s new reality show, “Driving Force’, will debut a couple of days after the Swing begins in Denver, so perhaps a three-week break isn’t the worst thing in the world. When the pace picks back up next month, it’s going to hook up at the hit and get up to speed before we know it.  And we wouldn’t want it any other way.

I’ll be popping up over the next few weeks on ESPN2’s Inside Drag Racing and a number of other ESPN Motorsports programs. After the Mile-High Nationals on Thunder Mountain, check back here for the next “In the Groove”.

Until then….