Ron Capps was on top of his game Sunday.

And, by late afternoon, the driver of the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat for Don Schumacher Racing was celebrating in the winner’s circle at the Dodge NHRA Indy Nationals presented by Pennzoil.

In the finals, Capps clocked a 4.110-second elapsed time at 294.63 mph to defeat Kalitta Motorsports’ J.R. Todd, who slowed to 10.318 seconds after smoking the tires off the starting line at Lucas Oil Raceway.  

This was Capps 65th career national event victory - 64 in nitro Funny Car and one in Top Fuel in 1995 in Seattle while driving Roger Primm’s dragster.

This was Capps first “true” national event victory in Indianapolis in his 560th career start. He did win in Indy in 2014, when he defeated John Force in the finals round of the rain-delayed event held two weeks earlier in Brainerd, Minn.

“Well, I've won the Big Bud Shootout (in Indy) three times,” Capps said. “I don't get that mentioned. Leave it to 2020 for me to get my first win at Indy. For a driver to say that he's won at every track on the circuit, I'm not sure how long that list is, but that tells you the talent that I've had around me since I started my career.

“The last two weeks were hard with these two races here after the break. To come back and know that we're on limited time to make a run in the points to do something. The coolest thing is I just got a message from the president of NAPA and he just texted me which means he was watching the show on Fox and that's huge. Like I said, I wish I could melt this (Wally) down and send it to all the essential NAPA Auto Parts people around the country because they were on it through all the COVID stuff and proud to represent this sponsor. But, for Dodge to jump in and win a Dodge race, Pennzoil, all that stuff.”

On Sunday, Capps beat Tim Wilkerson, Blake Alexander, Bob Tasca III and Todd. A DSR Funny Car has won the last seven completed events, dating back to October 2019, and DSR has campaigned a Funny Car in the final round for the past nine races. DSR, NHRA’s winningest team, now has 349 career victories.

“This is hallowed ground and I really started to wonder if I would ever win it,” Capps said. “I've said it before, the Gods here will decide when you're going to win this race. Some people they rattle off seven or eight wins. I just got a phone call from Ed (“The Ace”) McCulloch who is the king of Indy and one of my biggest heroes. It may not be the U.S. Nationals, but maybe we broke the yolk. This is still a place that’s got so many great memories and such great history.

“But most of all, this trophy is going to my wife, who's been coming to this racetrack with me for 20 something years. Our family, our friends, but my wife has come here and rode that emotional roller coaster of being close and not winning and on top of it her birthday is always at the Indy race and all those years she's just kind of rode along when I've been an emotional wreck after coming close and not being able to win and knowing how much it means. I just called home and she was crying, and it means so much to everybody. So, can't wait to take this home and spend the next couple of weeks partying with it.”

Although Capps knocked out all-comers Sunday, he was quick to admit it wasn’t easy.

“Another thing about this track, it makes you earn it,” Capps said. “This track is not just a track you roll up there, you stab the gas and you go straight down the track. It's got little nuances that have really made it unique. You look at the Indy 500 over there and there are things that some drivers master and you look at Daytona and there are things that some drivers have mastered there.

“You really have to know this track and we’ve worked well together, Rahn Tobler and I, through those little nuances. Both lanes have different things you have to be prepared for and they can certainly hurt you. First round it moved around on me and that was the reason it smoked the tires at the other end, but we got lucky. The final round it did the same thing. It started moving me around a little bit and it spun down there and that's the reason I ran a 4.11. Otherwise, it should have run 3.99 or so again. You take a W even though when I got out, I said, ‘what did it run?’ because I knew that we were trying to run another 3.99. FOX rushed us. They were in a panic. It was live TV and we didn't get to warm the car up. And that was another thing. We got up and got strapped into it and had no time to think about anything. So, on top of one of the biggest races that we've had this year, we didn't get to do our normal warm-up and I don't know if it was good or bad, but maybe they're trying to tell us something.”