Ladies lingerie is not the answer.
 
Ron Capps, comparing his recent slump to that of the ones baseball players go through from time to time, said he won't be doing anything kooky or kinky, "Bull Durham" style, to get his NAPA Dodge Charger back in the winning groove.
 
The Don Schumacher Racing Funny Car driver has heard all the outlandish things ballplayers, and race-car drivers, have done to try to snap a string a bad luck.
 
Said Capps, "There's guys who say they put on a woman's G-string to get out of their slump. Or my favorite team, the (San Francisco) Giants -- those guys grew their beards. Each guy does something different and it starts working, and you don't want to stop doing it, as crazy as it might be. Every driver's got a way that they've gotten out of slumps."

Ladies lingerie is not the answer.
 
Ron Capps, comparing his recent slump to that of the ones baseball players go through from time to time, said he won't be doing anything kooky or kinky, "Bull Durham" style, to get his NAPA Dodge Charger back in the winning groove.
 
The Don Schumacher Racing Funny Car driver has heard all the outlandish things ballplayers, and race-car drivers, have done to try to snap a string a bad luck.
 
Said Capps, "There's guys who say they put on a woman's G-string to get out of their slump. Or my favorite team, the (San Francisco) Giants -- those guys grew their beards. Each guy does something different and it starts working, and you don't want to stop doing it, as crazy as it might be. Every driver's got a way that they've gotten out of slumps."
 
He said he did watch the baseball film "Bull Durham," but he insists he won't be like the Tim Robbins character, Nuke LaLoosh, who wore a garter belt to get his hopelessly errant right-brain / left-brain system reeled in.
 
"My fans don't have to worry about me wearing a garter to change my luck," Capps said. "I've done some pretty crazy things. I dressed up as a woman for 'Scelzi Sez' (the fun-loving ESPN segment he sometimes participated in with incorrigible former teammate Gary Scelzi) once. But I definitely won't be wearing a garter."
 
Ironically, he was wearing a smile last Sunday at Norwalk, Ohio, even after finishing as runner-up to Mike Neff in the Funny Car final.
 
"I don't know if I've ever been that happy to lose a final round," Capps said.
 
He wasn't happy about losing but rather about seeing the NAPA Dodge in the final round for the first time since last July 18, when he won at Sonoma, Calif.
 
"I don't like to B.S. people too much," he said but with his car's performance of late, under the watch of new crew chief Tim Richards, he couldn’t help but tell a few confidants, "Were' going to be in the winners circle soon."

Now Capps can say it to everyone: "It's coming soon. I expected it, to be honest. I expect more with Tim. There's a way that just sometimes you click. He has won something like 70 races as a crew chief. I think it's going to be a good rest of the year for our team."

That's how much advancing to the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals final round meant to him and his team -- a team that has had offers to leave but stuck with DSR and Capps, believing that better times are coming.
 
But to be honest, Capps wasn't sure what to think when Neff, who had lane choice, picked the left side for that final run. All day the lane of choice had been the right lane, or as Capps said of the left side, "That lane seemed inferior a lot of the day."
 
So maybe the heat had gotten to Neff. Maybe "Zippy" was zapped, worn out from working nonstop all day as driver and crew chief on the Castrol GTX Mustang. Whatever was going on, Capps said, "I felt like we had lane choice going into the final." He figured it was some gift so he would take it.
 
Then it occurred to him that Neff might be messing with his psyche. Even the veteran Kim Richards, now on Capps' crew along with husband Tim, was dumbfounded. "No way," she said in disbelief at Neff's preference.
 
Capps said, "I was pretty much still convinced that by the time I got suited up and got in the car that they were going to change their minds."
 
They didn't, and Neff earned his third victory in six final rounds in only the 10th race of the season.
 
"We gave him a good race," Capps said. "That's how good Zippy has been all year -- he saw something in that left lane, and obviously it worked."
 
Still, Capps had to ask. He told Neff at the top end that he was sure Neff was going to take back the right lane. "Nope, nope," Neff told him. "That's the lane I wanted."
 
Neff explained to reporters Sunday at Norwalk why he chose the left lane and said after winning that "it was one of those things that you would look like a real idiot if it didn't work, since everyone [with lane choice] was running in the right lane." It turned out he was a closet left-lane lover there that day.
 
Said Neff, "My car had just been getting real fast in the right lane out at about 80 feet. It was chopping the tire pretty good. It just looked kind of awkward to me. I was actually contemplating taking the left lane in the very first round, but I went in the right. It looked funny and kind of looked worse the second round, so when we lost lane choice in the semis against Cruz (Pedregon) I was like, 'Good,' because I would have taken the left lane in the semis if I had the option."
 
That might have been another example of over-thinking the situation, something Capps said can happen when a driver gets in a slump.
 
"When things are going good, they're just going good. All of a sudden they're not going good and then you compound it by thinking too much about how to fix it or why is it not so good," he said. Life starts becoming overdramatically disastrous when, he said, "you start thinking too much about it and analyzing this or that."
 
Becoming mired in misery can be a mind set, but Capps said the reality is that this is his job.
 
"This is all I do, " he said. "It's not like, 'Eh -  if I don't do that well, it's OK -- I can go home, play with the kids, whatever.' It's my livelihood. I could lose my job if I'm not doing well. It's like a baseball player being cut from the team.
 
"So I approach every weekend -- I approach every day . . . I have to wake up in the morning -- every morning I get up like (New York Yankees star) Derek Jeter does -- and I have to make myself better at my job every day. So I'd definitely compare it to a baseball player," Capps said.
 
And baseball players break out of slumps, too. They even get on hot streaks.
 
Capps isn't making wild promises, but he did say, "It has gotten to be more fun. I try to make sure everybody around me is happy. Anybody who works with me or has worked with me in the past will tell you I try to make it fun, no matter if it seems it can't get any worse. I take it as a compliment when people tell me that. And Tim made the comment that [he and Kim] haven't had that much fun racing in quite some time."
 
This season has been tough for Capps, too, he said.
 
"It wasn't as much fun earlier in the year. When It’s not going good, it's tough to show up in the pits and keep a smile on your face -- when you’re used to having a good car and you're relegated to a car that you're just worried about qualifying. I'm definitely having  fun right now."   
 
One thing he won't be doing to prepare for the July 7-10 Route 66 Nationals at Joliet, Ill., is shopping at Victoria's Secret. But it's no secret that he's ready to come out of a slump.