Our week in Atlanta started off awesome with me being asked to throw the first pitch out at the Atlanta Braves game on Thursday and our NAPA crew was invited to sit in the NAPA AUTO PARTS suite and watch the game as well which was pretty cool.

Then we headed out to Lake Lanier for our 2nd annual get together with a couple hundred great NAPA customers and AutoCare Center people. It was a great turnout with great food and a beautiful view of the lake. See….Now you know why I had a good feeling about the weekend!

Well, to be honest, the performance of our NAPA AUTO PARTS race car with our Rahn Tobler led crew is most of the reason I have such a confident feeling about our weekends at the racetrack and I just found out that we get to run the NAPA “Brakes” special paint scheme again this weekend in Kansas, so hopefully we will have the same results!

After winning the Atlanta race I was able to take the trophy (signed by our whole team) into NAPA AUTO PARTS headquarters, put it in the middle of a big table in the same conference room that I sat at when I made my first visit there with Don Schumacher in 2008. This time I was able share it with all the people that make it possible for me to wear the NAPA fire suit. It was one of the best lunches I have had in a long time!

I then flew up to Canada to visit with Ideal Supply in Stratford, Ontario with a great dinner with them and their customers. Then I flew to Marion, Indiana to help open an awesome new NAPA store that had a huge turnout for my appearance there.

I was then able to spend the weekend at home with the family before heading to the airport this morning to go to Owatonna, Minnesota for a visit there before on to Topeka later this week.

Tune into ESPN2 this Saturday and Sunday to keep up with us and I will talk to you next week!

RC

At the Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte we had HUGE changes made with our team as team owner Don Schumacher moved veteran crew chief Rahn Tobler to our NAPA AUTO PARTS race car. It has made a huge impact already from where I am sitting (psst…it’s behind the wheel ).

In case you’re not hip on who Rahn Tobler is or you’re somewhat new to our sport, he was married to the NHRA legend Shirley “Cha-Cha” Muldowney and was her crew chief as well through all of the championships she won.

He was then the tuner for Doug Kalitta for many years (and many wins), then went to tune Cruz Pedregon and got another ring before joining DSR a couple of years ago on my teammate Jack Beckman’s Funny Car.

We had a great start together on the NAPA AUTO PARTS team in Charlotte with #1 qualifier thru Friday qualifying and ending up #3 when qualifying was over. Race day on Sunday we had some special guests as Michael Waltrip Racing’s Traci Hultzapple and our DSR team arranged for our NAPA AUTO PARTS NASCAR teammate Martin Truex Jr. and the whole MWR NAPA AUTO PARTS team to come out and hang with our NHRA team.

If you have been following my blogs you know that I was a guest at the NASCAR race in Fontana and had such a great time that. It was so cool to be able to show their team what we do and they had such a great time! Here is a link to some video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA9yiabBelI&list=UUdOcTGW4GLpGV4M0Bl66LxQ&index=1&feature=plcp ).

On top of all of that going on, Rahn tuned our car to a final round finish and I really felt that we had the best racecar all weekend. I can’t wait to get to Houston this weekend!

I spent some time in Hanford, California over the weekend to race a dirt car to get a little bit of seat time for the “Prelude to the Dream” PPV dirt race on Wednesday June 6th ( http://www.preludetothedream.org/about/).

Talk to you next week.

Ron

It is a short week for us as we are getting ready to go to Las Vegas for our race this weekend. It seems like forever since our last race in Gainesville, FL. We had a pretty good race there with our NAPA Filters car. We had NAPA’s Dan Askey down for the weekend and Tim Richards and our NAPA crew helped us show off a little with a great qualifying run in the last session on Saturday that put us in the top half of the qualifying field.

That gave us lane choice for the opening session on Sunday morning against Courtney Force. I have been telling all of you how confident I have grown as a driver with “the General” calling the shots and the guys on our NAPA AUTO PARTS team seem to have gained an extra bump in their step as well when we roll up to the starting line.

We won our first round matchup with a great run and that put us up against Robert Hight for the quarterfinals. Wouldn’t you know it, we ran our quickest run of the event, and our quickest run of the year so far and Hight’s team unloaded an unbelievable run and we lost a very close race.

While we were pretty upset we lost and weren’t able to win the race, that 4.05-second round run sure gave us a lot of confidence that we can race with any Funny Car team and that is very encouraging this early in the season.

I was able to take my son Caden to the Fontana NASCAR race last weekend and I have to tell you that it was probably the best father/son time I have had with him. I was the NAPA AUTO PARTS Honorary Crew Member for Martin Truex, Jr. and their NAPA AUTO PARTS No. 56 NASCAR team with MWR. Everyone at Michael Waltrip Racing made us feel so welcome and we had a blast. We really appreciated their hospitality. Here is a video that was shot if you want to check it out.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S9bhTi0D2Y&list=UUdOcTGW4GLpGV4M0Bl66LxQ&index=1&feature=plcp ).

Hopefully I will write our next blog on here with some pictures from the winners circle again in Vegas just like last fall.

Talk to you next week! RC

The “Gatornationals” has always been a very prestigious race and this year with NAPA Filters being a sponsor of the race along with our partners at Tire Kingdom, it surely become a little more important than it usually is, if that is possible.

We had a couple of weekends off since our Phoenix race and I spent last weekend at the March Meet nostalgia drag race and helped our NAPA folks out in the Bakersfield area spread the good word by doing appearances, autographs and just doing what we do best…bragging about NAPA! The Delcid family is responsible in helping NAPA become a household name at that track and that event, which had record crowds all 4 days of the event.

Yesterday morning I played golf here in Gainesville with some great NAPA customers and then headed over to the local NAPA store for autographs and a meet and greet with all the NHRA fans as well.

Have to run, talk to you next week!
RC

We got off to a great start at our season opening race in Pomona with crew chief Tim Richards at the helm of our NAPA AUTO PARTS team. We started our 2012 season off with a great qualifying run and then on Sunday we beat our teammate and defending Funny Car champion Matt Hagan with an awesome 4.09. We went all the way to the semi-finals before losing a very close race.

I had a lot of celebrity guests at the track in Pomona like “Bubba” James Stewart, Riki Rachtman, Ronnie Renner and Barry Weiss from the TV show “Storage Wars”. Randy Johnson also known as “The Big Unit” was hanging out with us in Phoenix, too. So it’s been a busy first couple of races for our NAPA team.

We were (as we always are) very confident going to Phoenix and especially with NAPA AUTO PARTS as the official track sponsor at Firebird Raceway. After a good qualifying run in our final session we were ready for raceday. We won a VERY close race with Cruz Pedregon in the opening round of eliminations and then lost to Mike Neff in the second round and our weekend was over.

Prior to the Phoenix race we had a great time with all the NAPA customers and store owners at a golf outing prior to the race. Then of course with everything we do at the track with everyone from NAPA in the Arizona area,it is always a pleasure to hang out with you all.

We have a couple of weekends off from the NHRA Full Throttle seriesbut next weekend I am going to be racing again in a nostalgia Funny Car at the legendary March Meet in Bakersfield, California.

There’s also the NAPA kickoff party that my NAPA teammate Eric Holmes will join me at.The race itself has slowly been turned into a NAPA sponsored track with some very cool things we do during the race. If you haven’t been before,you need to check it out.

We will then be on our way to Gainesville, Florida for our next NHRA Full Throttle race and I can feel the confidence growing with Tim and our NAPA DSR team.

I feel a win coming soon and with us fifth in the points after the last race, we can make our move to the top of the points standings.

I have to say good luck to my NAPA teammate on the NASCAR side Martin Truex Jr. in Daytona this weekend.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, @NAPARonCapps. I’m pretty good about keeping it updated and you never know what kind of info you’ll see on there, so check it out.

Talk to you soon.

Ron

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

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

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!

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

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