Baytown: Ron Capps Saturday summary

CAPPS QUALIFIES STRONG AGAIN, IS NO. 3 IN HOUSTON

BAYTOWN, Texas (March 31, 2007) - After two qualifying rounds were cancelled because of rain, defending event champion Ron Capps qualified No. 3 at the O'Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals at Houston Raceway Park, producing another strong effort in the fourth event of the 2007 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series.

Capps posted his best of two laps in the second session on Friday, a 4.806-second elapsed time at 315.34 mph. His previous pass resulted in a 4.886/292.52.

The driver of the Brut Revolution Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car will face his teammate Jack Beckman in first round of eliminations on Sunday.

"Obviously it's a very strange weekend to even be here," said Capps of racing without Eric Medlen and the rest of the John Force Racing organization. "Trying to get back to doing your job has been very difficult. We did what we wanted to do, and we qualified No. 3 again. The unfortunate part is, with the rain coming, it cut the sessions back and right now we're facing our teammate Jack Beckman fist round and it looks like Gary Scelzi, my other teammate, might be on our side of the ladder, which is something as a team you never want to see. We'd rather meet those guys later in the round.

"Right now, I think everybody is just trying to get through this weekend. It's hard to say this, but racing is kind of secondary, but you have to get your focus Sunday morning. John Force - I talked to him a couple of times and he actually called me a little while ago - gave me a pretty good talk.

"It's going to be interesting. It's going to be warm and humid, so the conditions for the crew chiefs are really going to change on Sunday. We'll just try to keep going the way we're going."

-credit: dsr