|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NATIONAL HOT ROD ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 16, 2016Ron CappsGlendora, California THE MODERATOR: Thanks for joining us today. We are going to talk about the 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series. Joining us now is Ron Capps, the Funny Car world champion, driver of the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger RT. Ron had five victories and five runner-up finishes this year en route to securing his first world championship. Congratulations, Ron. Thanks for joining us. Have you had to pinch yourself yet to make sure you're not dreaming? RON CAPPS: Yeah, every morning. I'm up in Santa Maria here. We're celebrating things, the golf tournament we do every year. Just got to the golf course. Every day, it's been just a little bit of kind of reality sinking in. The big one was getting up on the stage Monday night in Hollywood. I've been on the other side of that, out in that audience. To be up there talking to all the other races, my peers, my family in the front row, that was kind of a big reality check there. So it's starting to sink in. THE MODERATOR: Before Saturday, you were the winningest driver to have never clinched a title. I know you didn't enjoy talking about that. Do you feel like a burden has been lifted? RON CAPPS: Yeah, it is a huge relief. It did get old hearing that. You know, Jeff Wolf, and Leah, who has been working with me this year, my publicist, Jeff has been real good about keeping my attitude in check. It's easy to get a little quirky when that's brought up by a reporter every time, and you start to get tired of hearing it. Near the end, get to Vegas, Pomona, where it was going to almost happen, but I've been there before. Trying to keep a level head, not lose focus, even though we were fighting our teammates, was hard to do. I'm glad to have that gone. I hate it for Doug Kalitta. I know he's not on my team, a different team, but I know he's in the same situation. He's one of the guys that is deserving of the championship but hasn't won one yet. It was always mentioned with him. Now he's got to hear it all year long. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for Ron Capps. Q. Ron, were you ever worried this wasn't going to happen, that your legacy would be one of you won a bunch of races, but no titles? I talked to a lot of NASCAR drivers who were in that position where they lost a close one. They begin seeing a psychiatrist to try to get over that. Did you ever see that? RON CAPPS: No. Jeff Wolf is my psychiatrist this year. I think you were in several of the press conferences where I was really content where, Hey, if it doesn't happen, look what I accomplished anyway. I didn't have to look for it. (Indiscernible) and McCulloch were my heroes, crew chiefs, a legend in Funny Car history had never won a championship. I didn't realize that even working with him several years. I was okay. Not that I gave up on it, but I was like, Look, it's a new system, a playoffs. You just have to be hot at the right time. It was a bummer for me to think if we come up short after the season we had this year, by far the best I ever had, five wins, all the track records set, the killer runs we made, then it was going to hurt a little more this year if we didn't do it. Yeah, I did question could we keep up this pace, because this year was by far the toughest Funny Car. I know we say that every year, but it was so tough this year. So, yeah, I was prepared if we didn't to get through it. But don't have to worry about that now. Q. Ron, I'm sure you've been overloaded with surprise the last three days here. What do you think was the biggest unexpected call that you got congratulating you? RON CAPPS: That's a good one. To be honest with you, I'm trying to keep the text messages below 200 on my phone. My little icon says 196 before I made the call to you guys. I haven't had a chance to sit down and take all these messages I've gotten. I know once I get home, went to the awards, it was wide open all day Monday trying to get there, get my speech finished, do the awards. Hung over Tuesday morning. Drove up here to Santa Maria. It's been non-stop. I haven't had a chance to look and see. Snake called me. The president and CEO of NAPA Auto Parts called me, probably the coolest one so far. I know there's some messages I haven't seen. Friday I'm going to get a chance to sit down at home on the couch and go through and thank everybody. It will take a while to catch up. Yeah, I'd have to say the answer to your question, probably Snake was the coolest. Q. How long does it go before the pressure to repeat hits your shoulders? RON CAPPS: Today (laughter). I'm already thinking about next year. I was at dinner last night with Allen Johnson, Del Worsham was sitting with us. I rode to the dinner with him. We were talking about next year already. Brandon Bernstein and a bunch of us from other teams were in the car after dinner. Everybody was already talking about what's going on for Silly Season for 2017. I'm thinking to myself, I'm not going to have any time to enjoy this because everybody is starting to talk about next year. I guarantee you, Rahn Tobler flew back to Indy, has a few days' rest, but I promise you he's already focused on that. Probably not long. Q. Ron, I'm wondering, is this championship even more satisfying for the fact that you had to beat out your teammates to get it? RON CAPPS: Well, we knew we would have to. In the beginning of the season we saw the Forces and the Kalitta team struggle a little bit. But the Countdown you know they're going to come alive. Force the middle of the season, he starts winning Denver, the Western Swing stuff. I knew our cars were going to be the cars we had to beat to get to the championship. My car is much like their cars. The gratifying part was just continuing the pace we kept up. We didn't even win a race in the Countdown. I wouldn't want to race our NAPA car because Tobler, man, he was throwing down heats in the middle of the day, and when we needed them, we came through as a team. It was crazy to keep the pace up. Guys would run in front of us. I'm sitting in the car, the next car, going, Wow, that was a good run, I don't know if we can come close. Come out of the hatch after the run, the TV guy would tell me, it was low 18 of the round. That just continued. You never know if you can continue. That's the problem. It was a torrid pace that Ron Tobler put our car through. I think that just put a lot of pressure on other teams. I think that was the big key. Q. You got congratulations from your rivals on the stage. Were you expecting that or was that another surprise? RON CAPPS: I went to dinner last night. I almost got teared up last night, with Del Worsham in the car, my publicist Leah and Jeff Wolf, told me that Del put that together. I walked out on the stage for driver intro. You walk out, the fans are there. All of my competitors, not even a Countdown, but everybody was standing on the stage waiting and shook my hand. I almost lost it. It was crazy. That's hard to do. If I got asked, you wouldn't be happy about it, you just got your butt kicked for a championship. For those guys to come up there and do that, that was unbelievable. I can't even tell you. Just thinking about it again kind of gets me a little worked up. But that was huge. Q. Ron, known you for a long, long time. I know this without question is the pinnacle of your career. How do you do it again? How do you win two in a row now? RON CAPPS: I don't know. But Force told me they're going to start rolling in now (laughter). I don't know what planet he's on. But the competition is going to be -- I'm sure I'll talk to you guys in February and we're going to look around at all the announcements made, new teams and sponsors coming in. We're going to find out it's going to be even tougher next year. Just keeping it up. I'm pretty lucky because I'm not as good as I was made to look this year with my racecar. I wanted to go out there and do my job, but the racecar that was given to me by Tobler this season was unbelievable. It really would have taken a lot of messing up for a driver just to go up there and not win in this car. So it was just a good team effort. I was able to come through a few times on hole shots, but those wouldn't have been there either if the car wouldn't have run as it ran. I can't wait. I'm already thinking about next year. It was such a relief to win, have the season over, get that monkey off my back with that. I can't wait to defend it. I can't wait to here Ryan Hart announce our cars, Here is the defending world champion's car coming up next. Things like that haven't sunk in yet. Talking to Del Worsham last night at dinner, it's little things like that. It's not just winning now and enjoying it, it's representing the sport next year, wherever I go, being announced as the 2016 Mello Yello champion. Dell said that made him so proud every time his name was mentioned this year as last year's champion. I'm looking forward to soaking all that up. Q. Do you remember before you climbed out the racecar, when you knew you clinched, as soon as you got past the finish line, do you remember what the first thought you had in your mind was? RON CAPPS: I wanted to see my family, and I wanted to not break down on TV. I was trying to compose myself. All right, this is done. It was dark. The chutes are out. I'm at Pomona. You're at Wally Parks Boulevard. You're at the most historic race on a night run. We ran good, went 389. I was coasting down, the chute is out, the motor is coming down on idle, flames had been up, and it hauled ass. It was a great run to come around the corner, coast up to where the TV people are. I remember thinking how lucky I am to be where I am at Funny Car, making the turn, the chutes out, at Pomona. I'm being ready to be announced as the champion. There were a lot of emotions going on right there. Just wanted to see my family. Q. You were just talking about getting the monkey off your back. I'm sure winning that world title is the highlight of your season. After you clinched, you talked to us in the media center and said that it was a year of milestones for you, passing people in the record books, getting your 50th career win in the 50th anniversary of the Funny Car class. What besides the title are you most proud of? RON CAPPS: You know, just bringing NAPA Auto Parts. You have to remember, when they came in, I had the Brut sponsorship with the cologne. They came into the sport knowing our car was available with me as the driver. That's a dream sponsor. The first year they come out, they run commercials, it ran on network television with my NASCAR teammate Michael Waltrip. So the support and what they did for our sport and have done, I'm looking forward to doing commercials for next year now. It elevated our sport and opened it up to a whole new bunch of fans on the NASCAR side with network television, millions and millions of eyes. I'm proud we're able to give back to NAPA. Basically you can say, Hey, man, sponsoring a racecar in NHRA was a great decision. I think this championship has said that. Having the president and vice president, having them sit at our table, that really meant a lot and made me proud that I could, you know, say, Hey, our sport of drag racing is worth you spending those millions of dollars and making me the face of NAPA. Just a lot of gratifying moments. Q. Let's go back in time. The first race of the year you beat the reigning world champion, Del Worsham. A few races later you don't qualify at Las Vegas. How did that up-and-down sequence there affect your confidence or push any doubts about reaching the point you are at now? RON CAPPS: It didn't at all. I swear to you. It was funny because I knew, Tobler doesn't get too lost as a crew chief. Whatever it was, we were going to find it. We test if we normally don't run somewhere. I knew it wouldn't be long. Sure enough, we brought another car out. That's when I knew we had a chance at a championship, was really the Winter Nationals. We won. Him and I had a pretty good argument about something, it was personal. It was racecar, but it was something we hashed out Saturday night before we won Pomona. It was one of the moments where the relationship gets better or it doesn't. We came closer. It was a lot of talks we had Saturday night that was heated between us, but it made us so much closer. The next day we went out and won. We've been closer since. That moment that we stayed and tested on Monday with a different car that he had the guys get completely ready to go in case we had an accident, that car hauled the mail the next day test. I said, We're going to be fine. I'm glad we had the DNQ, I really am. It showed we were going to have what it took to do whatever we needed to do with whatever car. That was a big moment for me. THE MODERATOR: Congratulations and thank you for taking the time to talk with us this morning. Enjoy your off-season. RON CAPPS: Thank you, man. Appreciate it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|