Two-time Funny Car champion says he hasn’t slept much as he approaches first season as a team owner.
This offseason has been way less sleep than any other offseason.
Way less.
I’ve always dreamt about being a team owner. I’ve been professionally driving in NHRA for going on 28 years now, starting off driving for Don Prudhomme and then Don Schumacher. I’ve been in the sport since I was a little kid. Every weekend when my brother Jon and I were kids was spent with Mom and Dad with their race car. Then I would go help my dad with other people’s race cars.
The ultimate goal was to be like Don Prudhomme, Don Schumacher and John Force and own your own team. That’s the ultimate step. So, having my teammate and great friend Antron Brown sort of break the ice a little bit a couple years ago and start building his own team, it gave me a lot of ideas. It sort of sparked things along.
And honestly, the pandemic was when it hit me like a ton of bricks that I needed to have control over my future—and not just be a hired driver like I’ve been the last 27 years. For the first time, I was starting to look way ahead, instead of just to the next race and bringing my helmet.
Through the pandemic, some things happened. They happened to all of us, where you just question where the next day was going and what was going to happen a month in front of us. Nobody really knew. In the world that we’re in—the racing world—we definitely got quite nervous. I was nervous—not having another business to fall back on if something were to happen.
Ron Capps is a two-time NHRA Funny Car champion taking on a new challenge this year.
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It’s strange because the racing world is so different. There are so many people in worse conditions and wondering where their next day is going to be, and I feel weird, sort of, bringing up racing when the pandemic is going on. But it’s my livelihood. It’s been my livelihood for almost 30 years. I’ve always done nothing but racing.
Some things had come up, some offers. I had heard some possibilities of sponsors looking at maybe coming into the sport of drag racing. The ultimate would have been for NAPA Auto Parts—because I’ve been with them for so long—to go out with me on this venture. Ultimately it worked out that NAPA asked me if they could be involved. That’s kind of how it went.
To make this happen, I was relying on a lot of people, as I still am. One of the first phone calls I made was to Don Prudhomme, obviously one of my earliest mentors. And driving for the Snake is something. As a kid growing up and playing with his Hot Wheels and then one day getting that phone call being asked to drive for him was like getting the call up to the big leagues.
I’ve got to be honest, it was amazing how much advice Don Prudhomme gave me. He was calling me everyday. I was calling him. His wife Lynn—who was really behind a lot of the success for Don Prudhomme on the business side of things—was calling. It was really cool to get those phone calls.
Capps celebrated his second Funny Car championship last season at the Auto Club NHRA Nationals.
JERRY FOSS NHRA/NATIONAL DRAGSTER
I’ve always been asked about the comparison between Don Prudhomme and Don Schumacher, who I’ve been with for 14 years, because they’re so vastly different as owners. Don Schumacher comes from a business world. To be able to talk and have people like that around to give me options and advice was really cool.
Then all of the sudden there was Tim Wilkerson, somebody I compete against in NHRA. He’s a business owner at home and does the NHRA thing on his own as a one-car team. Then there was Cruz Pedregon. These people I race against that are team owners were calling to see if I needed any advice. It blew my mind.
The whole deal was not what I expected. Everything happened pretty late. The signatures weren’t done until last season was over. And I don’t think you could have put up a better scenario for our season last year—a chance to win a Funny Car World Championship going into Pomona knowing that I had letter of intent to go do my own team the following year.
So, rolling into Pomona, there were a lot of emotions going on in my head. I was trying to keep it all compartmentalized, I guess, and just trying to focus on driving at that point. But knowing all this was going on, and then to win the World Championship and then announce that I was going to have my own team the following year— you couldn’t have scripted it better.
Then it was the offseason.
The first thing I did was I had to let things settle at DSR because there was a lot of change going on there, and I don’t think Don was sure what he wanted to do at that point. We had several conversations. We put together a team last year with Dean “Guido” Antonelli, my crew chief, and John Medlen, and we won a championship. It was the first time with that team, and to win a championship like that is rare. It doesn’t happen very often.
The camaraderie that we had right off the bat says a lot about how we won a World Championship together. First thing I did after the season was I had to have respect and let everything settle at DSR. And then, I hired the whole team–Guido, John everyone of my last year’s team from top to bottom. That happened December 1.
I had to quickly learn a lot about health insurance, workers comp, payroll, attorneys, and things that I had just no imagination that went on behind the scenes. I thought I had an idea … but I had no idea. A lot of sleepless nights. A lot of phone calls. Once I got the team hired, I felt so much better, but I still wasn’t sure what we were going to do. We were so late in the game.
I can’t tell you how many times I woke up at 2 or 3 in the morning and just quietly got out of bed, careful to not wake my wife up, and went downstairs, made coffee, and just started in on all the number crunching. There’s sometimes I would wake up, just like you’d see in a movie, eyes pop open, and I’m in a sweat wondering if I had taken care of something or if I was going to make it through the first half of the year. I would run downstairs with a calculator and start punching numbers. A lot of moments like that.
“I have treated team ownership like I’m opening my own NAPA store.”
You have to remember, every NAPA store is independently owned. So, it’s people in your own neighborhood who own those stores when you drive by them. So, I took that lead. I’m a small business owner with a dream. I have treated team ownership like I’m opening my own NAPA store.
It all kind of came around like that. Once I had the team under contract, then we started working on our plan. It was amazing to me how many sponsors all of the sudden started calling and wanting to be a part of this—small amounts of money, product, big amounts of money, associate sponsorship. It was crazy how many sponsors came around and said, ‘Hey, we want to be a part of what you’re doing.’ That really made me feel good.
But, my gosh, I had now idea what I was in store for.
Paul Mecca, who has been working the NAPA account forever with me at DSR, he became available at the end of the year, and I hired him as our team manager. Fans have probably seen Paul and I together and probably wondered who he was and what he did.
I’m like a new business owner. I’m scrambling to find who I can get to do this or that. Guido’s wife, Kelly Antonelli, had worked with John Force Racing for many, many years. Anybody around NHRA knows about Kelly. A lot of people were trying to hire her. She ended up leaving John Force Racing.
Tony Stewart joins Ron Capps as new owners of NHRA teams this season.
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The cool thing was Tony Stewart, being a long-time friend of mine, has started his own two-car drag racing team. Kelly ended up going to work full-time with Tony. Tony allowed her to help me with anything I needed, stuff behind the scenes that you don’t think about—the merchandise, the contract stuff that goes on, everything. I couldn’t believe how many things I was starting to worry about: die-cast cars, shirts and hats that are sold, and where does the money go, and little things like that.
Honestly, Kelly was a huge help through the winter months. It was really cool to have Tony Stewart offer that up because it was essential that we had those little things taken care of. We were able to get a lot of things accomplished that I probably never would have.
About a month ago, I called Antron about ready to jump off a cliff and he talked me off of it. He said, ‘Listen, you and I are going to be standing somewhere in September, October, and we’re going to look back at this moment right now and we’re going to laugh about all these moments of stress or worrying about this or that. Everything’s going to be OK.’ “
Keyword: Ron Capps on NHRA Team Ownership: I'm a Small Business Owner with a Dream