NHRA

Ron Capps Phoenix Friday Qualifying

RON CAPPS, U.S. TOBACCO CO. CAMARO Z28, sits on the pole after two qualifying rounds today. Capps blasted down the Firebird International Raceway quarter mile in 4.895 seconds at 305.42 mph, edging out Al Hofmann for the No. 1 spot. HofmannÂ¹s ...

Edited: Apr 15, 2002, 11:45 PM

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RON CAPPS, U.S. TOBACCO CO. CAMARO Z28, sits on the pole after two qualifying rounds today. Capps blasted down the Firebird International Raceway quarter mile in 4.895 seconds at 305.42 mph, edging out Al Hofmann for the No. 1 spot. Hofmann¹s 4.970-second lap from the first session didn't hold up. The pass was not without incident, as Ron experienced a broken windshield and parachutes that didn't open.

CAPPS: "A lot of times you get a mist out of the injector that comes out of the line, it may be a small leak. When you are going speeds of over 300 mph and you get the nitro on the windshield and the cold air hits it, it freezes. You're talking 4000 pounds more downforce on that Camrao body at 300 mph and it basically froze the windshield and cracked it. It spit pieces all over the cockpit. I was trying to dodge the pieces, keep my foot on the throttle, my hand on the brake and try to open the parachutes. I stopped it with the brakes, and right at the end it broke the brake rotors. I guess there was a problem with the parachute mechanism."

ON THE RUN: "It didn't feel that good. When I got out I was looking at the windshield and Bob Unkefer (NHRA announcer) told me that he'd have to do two interviews. I remembered that the only time we ever had to do two interviews was when we were low qualifier and they had a T.V. uplink. I said Œwhat did I run¹ When he told me I was surprised. Last year at Pomona we ran a string of 4.80s and the Camaro felt real smooth. When they run good like that you don't have to do much. If you had asked me what I thought I had run, I'd have said a .97 or .98. ŒAc'¹ (crew chief Ed McCulloch) said it would run a high .90. It's got more in it. Ace has been trying to get as much out of each run as possible. The sun was still on the track, he didn¹t want to get too crazy. You never know, we might get some cloud cover tomorrow and things might change. You have got to give a lot of credit to Chevrolet. They did a lot of work to help us and (Whit) Bazemore with this 2000 Camaro body, with wind tunnel data in particular. They're telling us they're 100 percent behind us and that they will do whatever it takes to get the Camaro in front of John Force's Mustang."

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