Seattle: Ron Capps Saturday notes

CAPPS KEEPS ON TESTING, TAKES NO. 6 IN SEATTLE QUALIFYING

KENT, Wash. (July 18, 2009) - Funny Car class points leader Ron Capps and legendary crew chief Ed "Ace" McCulloch once again took advantage of certain atmospheric and track surface conditions to test components on the NAPA AUTO PARTS Dodge Funny Car during qualifying for the NHRA Northwest Nationals. As a result, Capps qualified No. 6 for the event and will face Cruz Pedregon in the opening round of Sunday's eliminations.

Capps' quickest lap of 4.245 seconds at 274.94 mph came in today's third session, which followed two tire-smoking runs of 7.038/90.24 and 6.953/91.15 on Friday. The final session produced a similar 6.882/90.42.

"Qualifying was, to say the least, interesting for us," he said. "We came off the win in Denver and Ace had been planning on doing some testing here for sure in Seattle and Sonoma on some pretty significant things with the NAPA AUTO PARTS Dodge. And he was pretty impressed with what he saw in Friday qualifying.

"Even though the car didn't go down the track - and what you learn out here through trial and error sometimes is that these things don't actually work - he's real happy with what he's learned.

"So, he left those components on for Saturday, and, of course, qualifying No. 6 was good because we needed lane choice. On top of that it just showed that he's getting a handle on everything.

"We're trying to gear up for the Countdown (the playoffs held in the final six races of the year), but at the same time we want to win races for NAPA. It's a tough position to be in. To be able to start from No. 6 is a great effort by Ace and the NAPA guys.

"These two lanes here are very, very tricky and very demanding on a crew chief and very demanding on a driver. So, everybody's got to be on his game."

-credit: dsr