Gainesville: Ron Capps Saturday summary

Capps Will Start 12TH At Gainesville

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (March 20, 2004) -- Ron Capps drove his Skoal RacingSM Chevy Monte Carlo Funny Car to the No. 12 qualifying spot Saturday as qualifying for the 35th annual Mac Tools Gatornationals was completed.

Capps, a 14-time NHRA event winner, drove to a weekend-best performance of 5.052 seconds at 293.73 mph on Saturday's first qualifying effort, before slowing to a run of 5.477 at 185.52 on his final qualifying attempt.

"We feel comfortable that if the weather stays the same that we can duplicate what the car was trying to do on the last run on Saturday," Capps said. "We haven't started off with the best results at the first two races, but right now, as tough as this Funny Car class is, anybody can win these races."

Capps will face off against long-time nemesis John Force in the first round of Funny Car eliminations at 11 a.m. (ET).

"He (John Force) is the best guy out there," Capps said. "We're not going to focus on racing (John) Force. We know they're going to run pretty good. We're still working on our setup. It's unfortunate that we have to race someone that tough early in the day."

ESPN2 will televise two hours of qualifying highlights from the Mac Tools Gatornationals beginning at 2:30 a.m. (ET) on Sunday, March 21 and show two hours of final eliminations at 11:30 p.m. (ET) on Sunday, March 21.

-www.snakeracing.com