It was a Hell(cat) of a ride for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) driver Ron Capps on his drive to the winner’s circle at the 51st annual Amalie Motor Oil National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Gatornationals at historic Gainesville Raceway.

Capps’ fourth career Gatornationals event victory extended DSR’s Funny Car consecutive win streak to ten national events since October 2019!

From his No. 4 position on the eliminations ladder, Capps sped past competitors Jim Campbell and Alexis DeJoria and into a hotly contested semifinal match against No. 1 qualifier and DSR teammate Matt Hagan; quite literally as Capps’ Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Funny Car crossed the finish line in flames while still posting the lowest elapsed time run and top speed of the weekend.

“We blew up right when I stepped off the gas in the semifinals,” said Capps who emerged unscathed after turning on the win light and employing a “hockey stop” maneuver to slow his car after a 3.898-second pass at 329.99 mph to defeat Hagan’s 4.016/312.64. “It exploded down there but thanks to the changes made by the Don Schumacher Racing fab (fabrication) shop, this body stayed on, rather than launch up in the air. I felt very safe after it blew up and everything stayed together on the car.”

(Ron Capps and the Napa Dodge prevailed at NHRA’s marquee Gatornationals event)

With limited time to return to the staging lanes, Capps’s Crew Chief Rahn Tobler opted to unload a back-up Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat for the final round showdown against No. 2 qualifier Tim Wilkerson. Capps powered to a 3.937 sec./323.12-mph lap to defeat his opponents 3.945/325.92 and bring home his second Wally trophy of the season and 66th of his career.

“We all knew it was (Crew Chief Rahn) Tobler’s birthday and we all secretly wanted to win on his birthday, but to bring out a car that we had as a backup, that’s never made it to the finish line and it goes 3.93 in the final round of the Gatornationals is crazy,” said Capps. “He’s had that car up in the trailer since last year when we ran it at ‘Night Under Fire’ at Norwalk (Ohio) and made a check-out run with it and he put it away for these occasions. With live TV pushing us, we had every team member of Don Schumacher Racing over here working on the car. It was unbelievable. Team members you’re battling against in the championship are over here helping our guys and it was cool.”

Those efforts resulted in moving Capps up one position into fourth place in the Funny Car championship standings and into a four-way fight amongst the DSR teammates atop the leaderboard with just four national events left on the 2020 calendar.

Leading the charge towards the Funny Car championship with 569 points is Jack Beckman and his Infinite Hero Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat based on two wins and two runner-up finishes, and who, despite a quarterfinal loss to top qualifier Hagan, remains four markers ahead of him.

For his part, Hagan drove the Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Redeye out of the gates for the opening round bye-run just as the “demon-possessed” namesake implies, posting a 3.915-second run at 327.90 mph to immediate set the low elapsed-time (e.t.) and top speed standard to beat. With the win over Beckman and the loss to Capps, Hagan remains firmly in second place.

(Matt Hagan qualified #1 for the event at 3.975 secs in the Redeye Hellcat SRT)

Sitting third in the points coming into the weekend, Tommy Johnson Jr. took his MD Anderson Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat for a drive to a first round win against J.R. Todd which was followed by a quarterfinal loss to Wilkerson. He does maintain his position in the standings with 512 points ahead of Capps who rounds out the top-four with 486 points.

Posted with files by Pat Caporali and Bruce Biegler 

(Tim Wilkerson had his best race and finish of the season – he qualified the LRS Musting #2 (4.003 secs) and advanced to the championship round)

Event Essentials:   Amalie Motor Oil Gatornationals  (Sep 25-27th, 2020) 

(John Smith entered this Dodge Charger — the independent qualified #13)

(Bob Tasca III was a semi-finalist in the Motorcraft sponsored Ford Mustang.  He entered eliminations after qualifying 3rd.)

(Blake Alexander had another event outing driving the Head Racing Ford Mustang — he qualified 6th and won his first round match)

(Independent racer – Dave Richards – qualified his steadily improving Ford Mustang in the #14 slot)

Photos by Luke Nieuwhof (DragNews.com.au) and courtesy of Mopar