NHRA

Denver: Engine breaks, Capps loses

DENVER, July 16, 2000 - A rare engine explosion and fire in the first round Sunday knocked Ron Capps and the U.S. Tobacco Co. Camaro Funny Car out of the Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway. Capps, whose great reaction time of .477 to ...

Edited: Apr 15, 2002, 11:45 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

DENVER, July 16, 2000 - A rare engine explosion and fire in the first round Sunday knocked Ron Capps and the U.S. Tobacco Co. Camaro Funny Car out of the Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway.

Capps, whose great reaction time of .477 to Hofmann's .521 put him in the early lead, thus fell to Al Hofmann's 5.153 at 295.27 mph. Capps coasted across the finish line with the engine on fire at 7.018 at 129.52.

"A rod broke eight-tenths of a second into the run," said crew chief Ed "Ace" McCulloch. "That was weird."

Capps, meanwhile, had his hands full, not only with the fire swirling around him, but with trying to keep the car off the guardrail and getting it stopped.

"The car started shaking real early and I gave it a quick pedal," he said. "It didn't react real well to that - usually when it does, it just takes off. Then the next thing I knew there was a big explosion and I had fire all over. I got the car stopped and got out and got the Camaro body up so the (NHRA) Safety Safari guys could get all the fire out. I wanted to keep the damage to the body minimal.

"Unfortunately we lost in the first round and lost an opportunity to gain ground on John Force in the standings," he continued. "We'd watched him lose just ahead of us. Well, we'll just get back to sea level and get our momentum back."

Capps fell to fourth place in the standings with 787 points, five behind Tony Pedregon.

The next NHRA event is the Northwest Nationals, July 28-30, at Seattle.

Qualified: No. 9, 5.174 seconds at 282.36 mph.

First round: Al Hofmann def. Capps

Next Event: Northwest Nationals, Seattle, July 28-30

TV Schedule: ESPN2, Qualifying, July 29, 10:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m. (ET); Eliminations, July 30, 7-9 p.m. (ET)

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Denver: Stevens has plenty of work to do

Next article Denver: Kurt Johnson climbs the mountain

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Niels Koolen makes switch to Abel Motorsports ahead of 2027 Indy NXT campaign

Indy NXT

IndL Indy NXT 41 min

Niels Koolen makes switch to Abel Motorsports ahead of 2027 Indy NXT campaign

GT World Challenge Portimao: All you need to know about season finale featuring Max Verstappen

GT World Challenge Europe Endurance

WCEE GT World Challenge Europe Endurance 1 h

GT World Challenge Portimao: All you need to know about season finale featuring Max Verstappen

13 Autosport retains unchanged lineup for 2027 IMSA campaign, eyes global expansion

IMSA

IMSA IMSA 1 h

13 Autosport retains unchanged lineup for 2027 IMSA campaign, eyes global expansion

Bourdais, Moss headline second batch of Sebring's 75 all-time greatest drivers

IMSA

IMSA IMSA 1 h

Bourdais, Moss headline second batch of Sebring's 75 all-time greatest drivers

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts