The most impressive part of Ron Capps’ victory was not how quick or fast he drove his NAPA Auto Parts Funny Car to victory at the NHRA Auto Plus New England Dragway. It was in how he landed the dismount in acrobatically exiting his winning vehicle after beating Alexis DeJoria in the final round.

Capps slid from the roof post across the hood and off the other side, landing on his feet. The move was premeditated and absolutely inspired.

“I think I pulled a muscle,” Capps said with a laugh after the move.

The move, Capps said, was inspired by fallen Funny Car driver Eric Medlen, who used to exit his winning Funny Car with a similar move.

“I was thinking about Eric Medlen winning, him grabbing the trophy as his guys pulled up,” Capps explained. “His guys sprayed full throttle on him and he ran and slid down the side of the car, which I always wanted to do. Eric did it and I thought it was the coolest move ever.

Capps admits he didn’t quite perfect the move.

“I was a dummy and tried to slide down the windshield and hope over the injector,” admitted Capps. “There were a few obstacles on the way down. I should have just done what Eric did. It was live television and I had a helmet on, how bad could it have been? I knew I would either land it or end up on Sportscenter for the wrong reasons.”

For Capps, everything, including the dismount, fell perfectly into place.

Capps scored his first win of the season and earned the final winner berth into the Traxxas Funny Car by covering the New England Dragway racing surface in 4.095 seconds at 315.19 to beat DeJoria who was gunning for an unprecedented third consecutive Funny Car win by a female driver. 


Capps admits the competitiveness of the Funny Car division this season makes losing a painful experience.

“There’s going to be two or three good teams who will fail to make the Countdown,” Capps said. “That’s how stout Funny Car is. It’s so scary that when we lost in the first round at Bristol, we fell three or four spots [in the point standings], and only a few rounds of falling out of the top ten. That’s crazy because I was fourth a few races ago. I thought to myself, anything can happen, you have a few bad races and you’re out of the top ten. Then all of a sudden you are on the West Coast tour, and worrying about how to get in the top ten.”

The victory marked the first for Capps since winning last season’s Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd, Minn.

“I cannot wait to get home and watch the race on DVR,” Capps pointed out. “You talk about side-by-side races. Our first two rounds were decided by thousandths of a second. I thought, ‘this could be a long day.”

“And, it was.”

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