Man I love early January!

Not just because it’s only a few weeks before we’re back on the track with our NAPA Funny Car, but getting to spend time with family and friends at home through the holidays is always great for the mind in my line of work.

The racing season is such a demand both mentally and physically on our race teams to compete at the highest level of competition. We go to sleep at night thinking about how to be better the next time we’re on the track and we wake up with thoughts of how to dig down deep and see if there’s anything above 100 percent we can give.

January brings a renewed energy that we get after the holidays and all of the new and fresh things start to show up. We always get new parts and pieces in the shop that Tim Richards and our NAPA team massage and fine tune with the idea that it will be something that will help our team gain that extra edge.

The funny part is that while December rolls on by and the fans sort of forget about racing while it is the off season, the work at the shop by our NAPA team gets busier and busier. Before we know it we will be down in Florida in a couple weeks testing our new NAPA hot rod and gearing up for Pomona and opening day on Feb. 9.

My appearances for NAPA AUTO PARTS like store grand openings, tool fairs and all other fun NAPA get-togethers for 2012 are already being planned and booked. Most likely you’ll see me somewhere soon. I have lots of visits confirmed, and I’m looking forward to spending time with our employees, customers and NAPA race fans.

Make sure you follow me on Twitter (@NAPARonCapps) and our Facebook fan page because I keep everyone up to date on what’s going on with our NAPA team and me when I’m off the track.

Happy New Year and I’ll talk to you soon!

RC

I need to back up a little bit since I haven’t posted anything in a couple of weeks on here, but it has been a fun and busy period.

We were headed to Pomona last time I blogged, and our NAPA team entered the last race in Pomona as one of the six teams with a chance of being the 2011 Full Throttle world champion. After our win in Las Vegas, we felt very confident that we were going to be in the mix on Sunday in Pomona. The race was threatened by rain throughout qualifying and we ended up not getting to make the final qualifying run due to the weather. When the field was set, we ended up number 10 in the qualifying order. We made our quickest run of the weekend in the opening round and then we lost a close race to Robert Hight’s team in the quarterfinals. Our NAPA team had another great weekend and on top of that we finished sixth in the Championship points. We had a lot to be proud of at our last race of the season and a lot to be proud of this season, especially to win Vegas and give our team a chance at winning the 2011 championship.

I just got back from Hawaii as right after the season ended I flew there to do some NAPA AUTO PARTS appearances for Tim Brown and his great group of people. We shot three commercials that will air in the islands for Brian Kitagawa’s NAPA stores on the big island, as well as for his Dodge dealerships, and a NAPA commercial for ESPN there. I had a great time with everyone in Hilo; they treated me like family. We also had some appearances on Maui at a couple of NAPA stores that Ed Fujinaka own. On Saturday night we shot a great commercial with Ed and me at Maui Raceway that will be very cool and very funny. We stayed at the drag strip there in Maui that night and Ed and the local NAPA folks put on a great VIP event for customers and the NAPA fans there. They said it was the largest turn out that the track has had, which made me feel good. We are already planning for 2012 in Hawaii with Tim and, from the sound of it, we will be making a few more appearance next year; can’t wait!

I am home this week and then we leave this weekend on the “Cruisin with Capps” fan cruise, it is the sixth annual and I am looking forward to doing…well, doing nothing for a week .

I am going to fly right to our shop in Indy right after that and get fitted for the new car that Tim and Kim Richards and our NAPA team have put together for this next season. I can’t tell you how pumped I am to have Tim Richards calling the shots from the start of the season. He came on this last season halfway through the year and showed us all what kind of future we are going to have together with our NAPA team.

Before you know it, we will be shooting those great NAPA commercials for the year, Spence always does a great job making sure that NAPA has the best commercials on the tube and I can’t wait to hear what the ideas for them will be this year!

I want all of you to know that I am extremely proud to represent all of you in the NAPA family, and our team strives to do the best we can to make NAPA as good on the track as NAPA is off the track. If you want to want to stay up with me, remember to follow me on Twitter and Facebook, plus you can follow my blog and pictures on NHRA.com’s driver blogs . Have a great holiday, talk to you soon.

RC

Man o Man…I love writing these blogs after a weekend like we had in Las Vegas! It was only a couple of weeks ago that we were in Phoenix and our streak of qualifying (longest in the category) was broken. We struggled and didn’t qualify, but our NAPA team never gave up. We traveled to Las Vegas the very next day and spent the whole day testing a new car that we had in the upper deck of our trailer, one that had been up there as a back up chassis since last year.

You don’t have to look far to see or hear me brag about our NAPA team and the dedication they have, the will-to-do-whatever-it-takes-to-win attitude, and it is contagious, for sure. We didn’t just win last weekend – Tim Richards guided our team to the number-1 spot in qualifying. With qualifying on the pole and the win, he catapulted us right back into contention for a chance at winning the championship in two weeks at Pomona.

In Vegas, Tim and the NAPA crew did a heck of a job adapting to the heat and the tricky track conditions. The proudest moment came when our special NAPA guests from headquarters in Atlanta watched as Tim and the NAPA team not only put a winning car under me, but we ran the quickest run of the day in that final round against our teammate Johnny Gray in the Service Central -sponsored funny car. It was neat to have Paul, Dan, Lee, Brad and Bob there along with a HUGE group of NAPA store owners and guests waving their NAPA racing banners in the grandstands; it was a great sight to see, trust me. We spent the next few hours in the winner’s circle and I have to tell you, having everyone there from NAPA AUTO PARTS along with my family made it one of the best wins I have ever been a part of.

I am on my way now to Hershey, Pa to some time with the Quaker City folks, Jeff and all of his group put on a heck of a dinner and a great event and we have made this part of my schedule every year and I look forward to it.

I will have a few days home and then I will make that two hour drive up to Pomona and our last race of the year; after last weekend’s win, we still have a shot of winning the 2011 championship, so cross your fingers!

Hey everyone, I am currently on my way back home from Las Vegas. Yes, we were racing in Phoenix last weekend, but we had one of those rare rough weekends, so our NAPA team packed up on Sunday night, drove to Vegas and we tested there all day on Monday.

As I mentioned in my last blog, our NAPA team had a new front half put on our car after our Pennsylvania race, so we were pretty pumped up about taking the new chassis to Phoenix and finishing the 2011 season with it. Things surely didn’t go as planned as we really struggled all weekend to get the car to respond to Tim Richard’s commands – and that was our first clue that the chassis might be suspect.

We had the longest Funny Car qualifying streak going back four years, but that came to an end in Phoenix, unfortunately. We had a brand-new car upstairs that we brought out west as our back up and so we unloaded it in Vegas and spent all day running it and made great progress in just a few runs, so Tim and our NAPA team feel relieved. We are looking forward to racing in Vegas next week and then finishing the season in Pomona two weeks after that.

I am headed up to Bakersfield to compete in the California Hot Rod Reunion nostalgia race and the Delcid family with their NAPA store is always involved with the events at the Famoso track in Bakersfield. It is one of the more historic track from the early days of drag racing, and Brad Shaffer and some other NAPA people are gonna be joining us for the NAPA kickoff party on Thursday night and at the race, where I will be driving Del Worsham’s 1972 Plymouth Arrow nostalgia funny car. It should be a great time hanging out with some of the fans that don’t get to our Full Throttle NHRA races.

We will then be gearing up for our Las Vegas race next weekend and all of the activities that surround that event.

Talk to you next week! RC

brrrr…..That is what we were all doing last weekend in Reading, Pa. for our third race in the Countdown. While our 8,000-horsepower nitro race cars love the cool conditions, it was borderline too cold and that made it a very tricky race day.

We kicked off the weekend with an appearance at the NAPA store in Gettysburg Pa. on Thursday and then a dinner with Jeff Riling and a bunch of people associated with Quaker City Auto Parts group of NAPA at a very cool restaurant.

We started qualifying on Friday with a great run of 4.05 seconds and that run put us number three at the time, and eventually when qualifying was over, we ended up in the sixth position. Believe it or not we were paired up to run against Robert Hight and that great team, which also happened to be struggling as of late and were not qualified as well as they usually are; that is not a team that you want to meet up with in the opening round. We woke up Sunday morning to temperatures cooler than we had seen in a long time and it was sort of uncharted territory for the tuners. While our race cars like the cool weather and cool track conditions, it can actually be just as tricky as very hot track conditions. Our NAPA team made a great run of 4.11, but our opponent ran the quickest run of the first round and our weekend was done.

We have a weekend off then we will be headed to Phoenix for the next event on the schedule. The temperatures are looking like low 90 degrees, so it should be interesting to see how the teams adapt to the warmer track temperatures. We dropped a spot in the Championship points to sixth, but we are only a little over four rounds of competition from the leaders – I feel like we can surely make that up in the next three races and make a run at the 2011 Championship.

Have a great weekend; going to cheer on MWR and Truex this weekend in Kansas from my couch for once, looking forward to it. Talk to you next week!
RC

Just left Dallas and I have to thank Bob Gant for one of the most fun and coolest pre- race dinner we have done; Bob even promised that he would wear his, or should I say “our,” lucky shorts during the weekend. I would have to say that it worked!

I am at home for a couple of days and then off to Gettysburg, Pa. for a NAPA AUTO PARTS Store appearance on Thursday and then I am going to drive to Reading that afternoon to meet up with Paul Mecca, who handles all of our NAPA appearances with DSR and NAPA; he is a guy that has been around the sport for quite a long time.

This is the part of the season that can be encouraging for you as a racer in the NHRA’s Countdown, or it can be frustrating for a team which worked so hard all season long, did not make the Countdown and do not have a chance at a championship. We have always seemed to be a contender of sorts, but after this last weekend, we can’t wait to get to Reading, PA and see what the conditions bring us this weekend.

We left Indy after moving up to the fifth spot in the points, only to have a strange weekend in Charlotte. For the first time in a while, we didn’t qualify in the top half of the field and it cost us big time as we lost in the opening round. Tim Richards, Kim, and the NAPA team were able to take a breath, put it behind us and focus on making up some ground in Dallas – and with the soaring temperatures there, it wasn’t going to be easy. But what happened this last weekend is the reason I brag about being able to drive the NAPA car, especially about my NAPA guys who flawlessly prepare our race car for crew chief Tim Richards to make the important tuning calls. This last weekend in Dallas was another great example of how much NAPA Know How Tim Richards has brought to our NAPA racing team. It is going to be fun to see what kind of a battle we can put up in these last four races of our season.

The way things look, as the races wind down closer and closer to Pomona, our DSR cars are going to battle each other for a championship. This is going to be fun because I know that we have four of the best Funny Cars on the grounds.

We had a great weekend in Dallas. It was hot and very tricky and the results are what have made it so much fun to be able to watch Tim, Kim and the NAPA guys work their magic. We won first round, but lost lane choice for the second round. Not having lane choice at that track in that kind of heat normally would mean your day is over, but Tim actually not only won the round, but sent me and the NAPA car down the right lane with the quickest run of the session! We then watched my brother Jon get by my teammate Jack. So, for the first time ever, I got to line up with my brother Jon in competition, a pretty special moment I have to tell you. I am extremely proud of what he does, but it was a little hard to put those emotions aside and concentrate on trying to get our NAPA car into the finals, and that is what Tim did. It was a hairy ride, we struck the tires loose and I was frantically trying to get the NAPA car hooked up and I came very, very close to the wall near the finish line. But we were in the final round and once again we were going to be in that right lane, which was a small hurdle. Tim made a great call and we ran 4.27, but Cruz made a heck of a run with a 4.20 next to us and we had to settle for runner-up. Overall, it was a great weekend for us in the points as we climbed back into fifth place and are only three rounds out of the lead. With the cool weather forecasted for Reading….it is going to be a very fast and interesting weekend and – we can’t wait!

I am going to be at NAPA Gettysburg on Thursday prior to the race and if you are in that area, come spend your lunch hour with me – I just might have a few Full Throttle race tix to give away. If you are one of the many who are going to the NHRA Hot Rod Reunion in October, be sure to follow my Twitter feed and our Facebook fan page for all of the cool stuff like the NAPA kick-off party on that Thursday night at Chuys, and I will be giving a few free tix away for the event that night as well. Talk to you next week!

I feel like I was run over by a truck today, but that is what the U.S. Nationals always seems to do to me after spending almost a week at our sports biggest race. Just landed back in San Diego and have been reflecting on our weekend for the last 24 hours and to be honest, I wish we could go straight to Charlotte tomorrow and start the Countdown right now.

We kicked off the Indy U.S. Nationals weekend with a get together at “Fastimes Indoor Karting” for an evening of karting with local NAPA AUTO PARTS customers, some of the local NAPA guys as well as some of the guys that make up the NAPA crew on our Funny Car team. If they thought I was going to be nice and let our guests win, they were sorely mistaken [grin]. I love doing these types of events, but I am there to win baby….

We had to get our serious game faces on the next day when qualifying started. As you know, I have been raving about how much our confidence has been growing since Tim Richards joined the team as our crew chief; we have been to three final rounds and finished runner-up in the last six races – we won Sonoma and those losses that we have had were all by half a car-length or less, pretty impressive!

We ended up number-three qualifier with a 4.06 second run at over 314 MPH, which reset the track speed record; it was an awesome run! On Monday we felt very confident as the temperatures dropped almost 20 degrees from Friday and with those cool temperatures it was time to pull the belts a little tighter than normal. We had a great run in the opening round, then came back and ran a 4.09 in the quarterfinals before having a cylinder (number two) not fire when I stepped on the gas in the semifinals. When that happened, the NAPA car made a hard right turn and I stayed on the gas as long as I could. In fact, just to show you how big of race Indy is, I would have probably gone till I saw sparks from the exhaust header scraping the wall, as long I as I didn’t see our opponent out the other window. The NAPA car ended up losing traction and our day was over – we will have to wait till 2012 to get an Indy trophy.

It was a crushing loss for the team because as the day went along, we felt like we were closer to winning the race, and had the race car to do it. THAT is a great way to go into the playoffs at our next race in Charlotte. We have this weekend off, going to head up to the central coast where I grew up and attend my cousin Erin Villa’s wedding in my hometown of San Luis Obispo, California. I can’t wait to see all of my family up there!

Once again, hopefully the next time we meet on here, I will have a picture of a trophy on our special NAPA Brakes car that we are going to run in Charlotte; it looks awesome!

RC

Hey everyone, I am sort of in between breaths as we have a short week again, well, actually we don’t have another race this weekend but I have been pretty busy so far this week. We have this weekend off before we start up the following weekend in Indy at the U.S. Nationals. That race will be the last race of our regular season, for lack of a better term. The top 10 in the NHRA Full Throttle points will be set for the “Countdown to the Championship,” which is basically a six-race playoffs to determine our champion.
We are certainly looking good for the Countdown as we seem to be gaining momentum at just the right time. Our race in Brainerd, Minnesota last weekend was proof of that as our NAPA team came very close to winning another race. We definitely feel like our chances are looking very good when the Countdown kicks off in Charlotte in September.
I told you that it was a short week. I left Brainerd on Sunday night and went to my aunt’s house a couple of hours away, a great place on the lake that always is nice and relaxing to visit. But I flew to Dayton, Ohio early on Monday morning for a NAPA AUTO PARTS appearance at the NAPA West Carrollton Monday afternoon and then a dinner with Eugene and all of his great customers and employees. Then it was up early again on Tuesday morning for a flight up to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan for a NAPA store grand opening and then another customer/employee dinner afterwards at the brand new store. Man, what a gorgeous part of the country it is up there. Michael and the mayor were awesome people who really made me feel like part of the Lynn’s Auto Parts family. They did a great job of promoting the event, and as you can see in the picture, we even had an official ribbon-cutting ceremony with a huge amount of fans that showed up to watch us. I had a great time and look forward to going back soon.
I got up wayyy too early on Wednesday morning and flew back to Detroit to attend the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America program and watch my former crew chief/mentor Ed “the Ace” McCulloch get inducted alongside some pretty cool people. It was a blast and I was proud to be there. Had to haul the mail back to Indy afterwards in a small plane to be here for our test at the track today. There were are a bunch of Funny Car and Top Fuel teams testing to get ready for next weekend’s big race.
I am flying home on Friday morning and gonna sit on my couch on Saturday night and cheer at Martin through the TV during their Bristol race; I feel a win coming soon for those guys. Have to run, heading up to make another run.

We have a rare weekend off coming up on the race schedule this week and only two races (Brainerd, MN and the U.S. Nationals in Indy) left in our regular season before we kick off our “Countdown to 1″ six-race playoff starting in September (with the second Charlotte race of the year).

Last week we talked about getting our first win of the 2011 season and being able to do so in our “NAPAPlatinumFilters” painted race car in Sonoma, and I told you that we got the okay to run the car again at the last race in Seattle on hopes of going back-to-back, but while it was another good weekend for our NAPA team, we fell short of two wins in a row.

We started off the weekend at a casual dinner with Seattle-area store-owner Ken Price and his family after landing Thursday night. If you remember the blog I wrote after our Atlanta race, you’ll remember I flew to Seattle afterwards, had dinner with Kenny, Art and friends, and the next day had a great time doing autographs and meeting some of their great customers and employees (before flying to Kansas for our race there the following weekend). Which brings me to a great point I wanted to make a few months ago: my relationship with Kenny is a great example of the friendships that are started through relationships in and throughout the NAPA AUTO PARTS family, something I see all over the country. I see it with sales reps and the employees of NAPA, with store and NAPA AutoCare Center owners, and all the NAPA people I see when we do store appearances or grand openings. It is something that I guarantee you don’t see with most other companies and it is always cool to show up at a race and see the faces that have become more that just people that happen to work for the same company I do. In fact, our next race coming up in Brainerd is always a blast because of the relationships we have built there over the years. We stay in contact with each other and I know that this year we are going to get out on the lake for some fishing with the NAPA people. We are also teaming up with the Power Lodge that is right across the street from the race track to once again have a get together before the race. Last year we did a demo-ride/NAPA-dinner event and it was a blast for everyone as we got to test ride some Victory motorcycles and test drive some very cool Polaris off-road vehicles on a course in the back of the store. We can’t wait for this year as well.

Getting back to last weekend, we qualified number 11 and won a huge, huge race first round against our teammate Johnny Gray in the Service Central Funny Car. I say it was huge because being number 11, we didn’t have our choice of lanes and they ran much better than we did in qualifying, BUT….that is what champions have to do. I think our NAPA team showed its stuff in the opening round as we ran one of the quickest passes of that round in what was considered to be the weaker lane. We lost in the quarterfinals to my other teammate, Matt Hagan, in another very close race, but our Tim Richard’s led NAPA team is very confident going into the Countdown and I can tell you that my confidence showing up to the track is as good now as it has ever been.

I am flying up to Bozeman, MT on Friday for a dinner that night and then also a NAPA store appearance. From there I am flying to Utah to attend my first ever Bonneville Speedweek at the Bonneville Salt Flats. It is something for my dad and me to knock off of the bucket list. I am looking forward to Sunday and Monday there just roaming around and being a spectator. Be sure to keep up with me on my Twitter (@NAPARonCapps) and the Facebook fan page as I will be doing updates of my first trip there.

Talk to you soon-RC

Finally…….I am writing this week’s NAPA post-race blog filled more with relief than with jubilation, and for more than one reason. For one thing, we are sitting in the parking lot of Disneyland in our Monaco coach and the kids are waiting patiently for me to finish this blog. We left the Sonoma track Monday morning for the seven-hour drive down here after I decided that the last few weeks of the Capps’ family RV vacation wasn’t enough and, since it was on the way home, figured we could stop and hang out at the Happiest place on Earth.

The second reason is, of course, the fact that we finally broke through and got our NAPA Charger into the winner’s circle. The icing on the cake was the fact that we brought out the one-race “Platinum NAPA Filters” special-paint scheme and conveniently put it in the winner’s circle! Tim Richards and the NAPA team started off the weekend with a great qualifying run that put us in the number-three spot. We were also one of the few cars to make it down the track with no tire smoke on all eight runs (four qualifying runs and four runs on race day), which isn’t something too many teams can say about last weekend.

We knew it was gonna be a tough day Sunday when we saw the eliminations ladder because we certainly were on the “tough” side. As most of you know, Sonoma is a huge race for me as it is a “home” race for me and I always have a huge number of family and friends there. This year seemed even better as I really got to spend some good, quality time with my family, as you can see in the pictures. Being there early allowed me to take Caden and Taylor to hang out with our NAPA team for all the pre-race stuff that the NAPA crew guys take care of before the fans start rolling through the gate on Friday.

We had an awesome, awesome dinner on Saturday evening with Ted, Brad and a huge group of NAPA people at “Estate” restaurant in Sonoma. There were a bunch of familiar faces there and, of course, at the race all weekend that I was able to spend time with. And like we do every year, we got to spend time hanging out with Bart Riebe’s Sacramento area guests in his suite. It was a great win for the team, for you, the people who make us proud to wear the NAPA logo on our chest and for all of the people that go out of their way to shop at NAPA.

I just got off the phone with Mike Rearden and got the great news that we will run the Platinum NAPA Filters special car this next weekend in Seattle, and while I am not knocking our NAPA paint scheme, this Filters car looks awesome and the fans love it!

Have to run; we are headed into Disneyland again today and the kids are giving me “that” stare…

Oh yeah – don’t forget that the 5th annual Cruisin with Capps will be hitting the water in December again this year and there are a few spots left , but not many, so hurry and make your plans and come join us!

Talk to you next week. Ron