The following are excerpts from a teleconference featuring the No. 1 seeds entering the NHRA Mello Yello Countdown to the Championship which begins Sept. 16-18 at zMAX Dragway. Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle), Jason Line (Pro Stock), Ron Capps (Funny Car) and Antron Brown (Top Fuel) are the No. 1 seeds in their respective categories at the start of the play offs.
MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us. We’ll start with Andrew Hines. Thanks for joining us today. Andrew, start talking about your season as a whole. Obviously you and Eddie, every team sets high goals for themselves, and is this where you wanted to be when you kicked off your season in Gainesville?
ANDREW HINES: This season has come pretty good to us. We’ve had a lot of I’d say unexpected success on my side of the team. We always keep Eddie’s (Krawiec) bike consistent. I’m the guinea pig on the crew. We make a lot of changes to the motorcycle for tune-up things and research and development for later in the year. This year everything has worked out in our favor. Years past I’ve been up and down on performance. This year it’s been a lot better. We’ve been making smarter changes, figuring out what our motorcycles need in different types of weather. Last year at this time we were hitting our stride because we had struggled with figuring out how to burn the Sunoco fuel. This year we’ve had a lot more notes to fall back on from last season. Everything has been pretty good. I had a few rocky stumbles there in the beginning of the season with a first-round loss in Atlanta. We can chalk those up to learning scenarios. Everything has been good as of late. Still haven’t had the quickest motorcycle, but found our way to the winners circle on Sundays and Mondays. It was really nice to get the U.S. Nationals win the other day and move into the number one in points. Looking forward to more success in the coming weeks. It’s going to be tough. The Pro Stock Motorcycle competitors have found every which way to make the class tighter than it has been in years past. I always talk about the class getting better, but you can see that’s the truth separated by 1/10th of a second. Killer racing going on right now in Pro Stock Motorcycles, and it’s going to be a dogfight all the way till the end.
Q: You talk that you may not have had the fastest bike on Friday and Saturday, with only that one number one qualifying position. Does that show why your bike is so good on race day, that you are kind of working on a lot of different things as opposed to being the number one going into the event?
ANDREW HINES: Yeah. We take a different approach with my motorcycle. Fortunate enough to have two teams running for Harley Davidson. We can treat each motorcycle a little differently throughout the weekend. We use one as a barometer to see how we should be running and we can run the other one around outside of our tuning window to find performance here and there. We hone in on that and figure out what we need to do for Sundays. It’s been working for us. Like I said, the season has been going really well. My performance turns around on Sundays typically. You’ve seen that in races here more recently. Maybe I haven’t qualified the greatest but I can pick away at it slowly on Sunday. The more rounds we get, the faster we can be. Quite the adventure we’ve been on here recently. It’s a little frustrating when you’re moving around and trying to learn things throughout the weekend but it all pays off in the end when you can find the performance on Sunday and start going rounds.
Q. In the press conference, you talked about some changes in the one motor that you had tested with. I’m sure you don’t want to talk much about what those changes might have been. But on the fuel side of things, I’m familiar with people talking about how two motors which are absolutely identical, one will just completely out-perform the other one. Do you have that same sort of thing happening? If so, what insights do you have as to how that happens?
ANDREW HINES: We do have that same phenomenon. It’s just the product of how each engine wants to run. All the parts come off the CNC machine, like the majority of other teams. The ports should be the same, pistons are all the same. Most people get them from the same fuel manufacturers. It all just kind of depends on what that engine might want a little bit different for cam timing. We don’t have a lot of just ability for cam timing. I might have a motor a little bit different some of the other ones. The engine I used this weekend is the same engine I won the championship with last year and the year before. Just I hadn’t been running it most of this year because I wanted to get some time on a different engine. Like you said, I told you in the press conference that I ran this engine in testing last week. It didn’t perform to our expectations because we had made some changes to it throughout the year. We put it back to our standard setup just like our other five spare bullets we got underneath the trailer, and it came back out running like it should have. It just took a little bit longer to find the tune-up on it this weekend than it typically does in a normal weekend. Like you were talking, one engine may perform better than the others or may not be as good as the other one. With the V-Twins, you might get the engine that doesn’t cooperate with itself. Tuning the V-Twin, you got to treat each cylinder as its own engine. The front cylinder might want something a little bit different than the rear. You just got to find that happy medium. When you get them both right, that’s when they put up a good number. It’s a constant battle and fight dealing with humidity, barometer, temperature. You’re sucking heat right off the racetrack with out air scoops being only 20 inches off the ground. The hotter the day gets, the track gets hotter, you’re breathing hotter air. Each cylinder might want something a little bit different even throughout the day.
Q. Probably a stupid question. Because you’ve been so successful, started right off the bat with probably the most successful team in the history of motorcycle drag racing, do you ever wonder what it would be like to go out on your own and create something from scratch and start off like that?
ANDREW HINES: Well, it would be definitely tough. I’ve seen the roads these guys go down. People have found different ways to build motorcycles and find horsepower, bring out different innovations. Working closely with our Vance & Hines customers, Jerry Savoie and Tim Kulungian, they’ve built basically an entire team from the remnants of an older team, but they found different ways to come out and find different horsepower. When I got kicked off in drag racing, yes, I was with the premier team that had been around for a long time with my dad leading the way and my brother racing. But they instilled in me if I wanted to learn how to do this, I had to learn to do it from the ground up. I started with a chassis as a normal person would. I had to figure out a way to build that motor, getting parts from this person, that person, stealing a lot of my brother’s spare parts, doing fabrication myself. I had to work my way up through those ranks. Never had to drive my own truck to the race. We would travel around in motorhomes. There’s a level of respect I have for the teams that have gone the hard way of doing it. I’m fortunate enough to have the backing of a major American company. Harley Davidson has really helped pave the way for us in the last 15 years.
Q. What is your confidence level this year versus your two previous years?
ANDREW HINES: I feel like I’m pretty confident right now. The last two years, notably 2014, I was less confident because I had been racing for 10 years or eight years since I won my last championship. I’d gone in the Countdown battle with a couple people years prior and made major mistakes along the way. It was always in the back of my mind I didn’t want to go back and make those mistakes. Luckily I’ve been able to learn from those mistakes, notably in 2007 and 2010. This year and last year I feel more confident than I did in 2014, for sure. My performance level has been higher this year. Haven’t had any red lights the last couple years. I’m knocking on my desk right now because it’s made out of wood. I’ve been kind of dialed in on the reaction times. My riding has been fairly decent. Haven’t been a superior rider as of late. Been kind of making some rookie mistakes on getting the bike to go straight down the track. Been pretty focused on staging and keeping it as shallow as I can to get the most ET possible. My lights have excelled because of that. I needed to improve on reaction time to pick up maybe a couple hundredths on the other end. I feel good about this year. I’m getting back into better physical condition than I have been in years past. Been doing a lot more running, keeping my stamina up, which helps on Sundays when you’re going around.
Q. Brittany Force is here at Charlotte Motor Speedway. She’s promoting the Countdown that’s about to come up. She’s about to go on a car ride with Kurt Busch. Have you ever been in a stock car?
ANDREW HINES: I have never been in a stock car. Something that would be fun to take a ride in. I’d like to drive one, follow somebody around, see what the racing line is like, see how hard those things can actually turn. I have ridden in a two-seater IndyCar at the Speedway at the Indy 500. That was an eye-opening experience going 100 miles an hour into a 90-degree turn. The thing actually hooks and goes around the corner. That’s the closest I’ve been to any roundy-round racing.
Q. If you get this championship, it will put you up with Dave Schultz. We talk about this from time to time with your numbers, where you rank. You talked about getting started in this sport, getting started in the business. Did you ever think you would get to the point where you would be mentioned in the same breath with a Dave Schultz?
ANDREW HINES: No. When I started out in this sport 15 years ago it was never on my radar that I could get to this point. It was years and years ago I wanted to retire. I thought I’d done enough for my level of racing.
Luckily it’s turned the corner and everything has come back to me here recently. A couple more championships and a lost more wins the last few years. That kind of smooths over any rough edges I had about it years and years ago. Starting off, I was 19 years old when I started, I was happy to go out there and race every weekend, have fun, ride a motorcycle that goes 200 miles an hour in under seven seconds. Like I said, it was something that was never on my radar. I would look at some of the stats those guys had and think, Wow, that’s a lot of wins. I’m going to be well retired or not in any shape to be racing by then. It’s just an evolution. I’ve had an awesome team the entire time that’s given me the capability to go out there and perform and have a flawless motorcycle every time. There’s probably a handful of times in my 15 years where I haven’t either made it all the way to the finish line or maybe less than three or four times I’ve had to push the motorcycle off the starting line. We’re talking about a couple thousand runs in that timeframe. To have a team that’s that resilient, to always give their best effort, make sure everything is flawless, that’s how you get to achievements like this. You got to have a great team behind you.
Q. When you go into the playoffs here, six races, do you go into it thinking, I can have one bad race and still win this thing, or is that a wrong way of looking at it?
ANDREW HINES: That’s a wrong way of looking at it. If you have an average race, you can still lose this thing. You have to get every round win possible. This is when experience comes into play, keeping pressure out of your head and in the right spot. You can learn from things like Indy this past weekend. I made a major rookie mistake on Monday. I didn’t eat breakfast. I paid the price come semifinals. I had no blood pressure, light-headed getting away from the computer after looking at a run. I had to sit down in front of our big fan in the pit area, cool off, drink as much water as I could to get my blood pressure back up. That’s when the seasoned experience rolls in. We rolled up for the final round, I was feeling horrible. As soon as I put my helmet on I felt like I could run a marathon. Get your head in the right spot. You make one mistake, it could cost you ultimately at the end of the year.
Q. One of your biggest competitors that you’ll be facing, you talk about the class being tough, talk about Eddie. One of your fiercest rivals is probably 30 feet away from you right now. Is it fun to have that battle and to race so tight with him?
ANDREW HINES: It is. Having Eddie as my teammate, it’s probably made it harder on the rest of the class because we try to push each other so much harder because we each want to have the faster bike in the pit area. We work on that every single day here at the shop to make sure our motorcycles are going to be as prepared, as identical as possible. We are very proud about how consistent they run with each other, while being near the front of the pack. You see other teams that have multiple vehicles, maybe they can’t get one of them to run. Seems like nearly every weekend we have consistent power and consistent enough runs where we’re both able to have a chance to run late into eliminations on Sunday. We push each other every single day to be better. We keep each other in check on Sundays and throughout qualifying, making sure we’re making the right calls, analyzing and preparing for each weekend. A lot of our race wins, they happen because of the preparation that happens here at the shop. We may get to the track and look like we’re not working hard. That’s because everything happened here at Vance & Hines.
Q. Monday, after the race was over, after you left the media center, I noticed you and your wife, Declan, on the starting line of the Nationals, that historic track. Was he taking his own victory lap down the track? I thought that was such a neat moment that really showed at the end of the day we’re all still just humans out here, showed the neat part of that family aspect. What were you doing out there?
ANDREW HINES: We repeated a picture that we took when I won the U.S. Nationals in 2012 when Declan was two years old. It was me holding his hand walking down the left lane of the racetrack. We wanted to repeat that exact same picture. We got hold of my parents who were at my trailer. They dragged him up to the starting line, repeated that same picture. At the same time he’s been bugging me. He wants to drive a junior dragster real bad. Every time he gets on that subject, he wants NHRA to start a junior motorcycle class. I had him stage right where the starting line was, went down on the golf cart. He wanted to make his first quarter mile run. He did that when he was six years old. He was laser focused. He drove a simulator last year at the Indianapolis car show, some display they had there. He was making laps around Indy Motor Speedway. He just had this super intense focus going on. I saw that same look on him the other day when he rode down the track here at Lucas Oil Raceway. He’s going to be a tough competitor. I think he’s got that same blood running through his veins that I got. He’s passionate about every single thing he does, whether it’s his Taekwon-Do practice, shooting the bee bee gun, riding his dirt bike and ripping up the grass in the yard. He’s 100-percent committed to everything he does. I think it runs in the family.
Q. When does he get his first junior dragster?
ANDREW HINES: It’s going to happen here soon. Probably over this off-season. He’ll probably be out there running in the five- to seven-year-old class next year. It will be a different experience for me. He’ll have four wheels instead of being on two.
Q. We’ve seen you, L.E. Tonglet, Angelle Sampay, close up this year. Is there one thing they’re hitting upon, or are we at that part of the season where everybody is getting their combination and getting their package dialed in?
ANDREW HINES: I think everybody’s got their combination dialed in right now. Obviously the playing field is tough. Most of the field this last weekend, like I said, a 10th of a second from one to 16. If you look from two to 16, this is seven hundredths. That is probably the tightest we’ve had in the history of this class. It’s not just those two. Everybody has brought their best out here for these last few races. You’re going to see more and more of that throughout this Countdown. It’s going to be deciding on the starting line from here on out. You want to make sure you get that advantage. You don’t want to give up any little bit at the starting line. Makes a difference on the finish line. We’re doing the best to make our my bike is consistent. Work on our 60 foots and we’ll be there with everybody else.
Q. How hard is it to have three races in a row to start the season? With Charlotte and St. Louis, they’re geographically close to each other, you can swing through. All of a sudden you’re three races in halfway through all in a row. How tough is that on you guys?
ANDREW HINES: Well, it sets the tone right away. If you have one bad race, then you know you got two more that you can attempt to try to make up a bad race. These days, it’s not going to happen. You’re going to have to be super consistent. You’re probably going to have to go to the semifinals every single race of this Countdown to have a shot come Vegas, Pomona. It’s fortunate for us these three races are bounced around Indianapolis so we can get back here and do normal maintenance on our motorcycles, go home and sleep in our beds, not worry about traveling around the country too far. I love three races in a row. Keeps your mind sharp, keeps you going from one race to the next. If we can get off to the right start, be on the right foot, it sets the tone what’s going to come in the next few weeks after that. We’re ready for the battle and we’re ready for everybody.
Q. Since the Norwalk race, that’s where you really hit your stride. Did you do a lot of testing in between there or just work on the dynos? Is it a matter of finding a hundredth here and a hundredth there?
ANDREW HINES: Lately it’s all been found here at the shop on the dynos. We don’t get a chance to test as much as we like because we’re always here working on the shop. In Pro Stock, everything is won at the shop. You got to have the horsepower to get to the finish line first. We can make do, dial our 60 foots in, get them close at the events. The NHRA Safety Safari does such a good job preparing the track, it’s hard to test anywhere else except the Monday after a national event. It’s hard to get that same racing surface at any other venue when you’re not racing in the Mello Yello Series. Our big thing is just pushing for more horsepower. We’ve come a long way in our valve train to make them rev up harder. Our Harleys are screaming across the finish line. We’re pushing higher than what Pro Stock is allowed to run right now. Impressive what our guys have been able to do. Working with our valve train companies to get stuff lined out, especially comp cams and drive trains. Everything has been working real good. We’re happy with where we’re sitting right now. If we can find three, four, five horsepower before the end of the year, it’s going to help us that much more.
MODERATOR: We have joining us Jason Line. He is the driver of the Summit Racing Equipment Chevy Camaro. Jason, talk about your season to date. You started the season very strong, even with all the changes to the category. How satisfying was it to get off to that hot start?
JASON LINE: Well, it was great, obviously. That’s the way you dream of starting. But with the playoff format, it becomes very unimportant suddenly. It’s what have you done for me lately, what are you going to do now. That’s where we’re at. It was a great start to the year. I’ll always remember it. It was a great thing. Now we have to finish the job.
Q: You talked about everybody was going to catch up to you. Is that what we’ve seen or have you been trying different things for the Countdown? You haven’t been as strong in the past handful of races as when you started the season.
JASON LINE: Yeah, thanks for noticing (laughter). Yeah, of course they’ve caught up to us. There’s no question about that. We have tested a lot of stuff, trying a lot of things. I’ve been using the last few races as test sessions. Maybe that’s smart, maybe that’s not smart. We’ll see here after the Countdown starts. But they’re going to gain on us. That’s just the way it works. For whatever reason, we chose to work on, I guess, things that were probably more important than what they did. It worked out well for us. But with the rules package the way it is, we’re all eventually going to be tied together just like we were when we had carburetors. So that’s where we’re headed.
Q: These six races are all very, very important. Each one has its own different characteristics. Is there one race that stands out more than another that you really want to have good success at, or do you treat them all as equal going into it?
JASON LINE: Well, I think we treat them all as equal. But obviously the first race, the Charlotte race, is huge. To get momentum on your side, that’s a huge advantage. That’s what we need to do. We need to go to Charlotte and win. In the past the Countdown has been both good and bad for me. When we’ve gotten off to good starts, we can be tough to beat. Obviously winning at Charlotte is very, very, very important.
Q: Talk about that Redding event. We always see there such incredible speeds and times. It’s usually cooler, a little bit closer to sea level. Is that one where you can let the motor kind of run a lot?
JASON LINE: Well, I think right now, NHRA has done a great job with the racetracks. The tracks, they haven’t deteriorated much. They’ve stayed in great shape. All of the races that we’re going to, the racetracks are great. You can give it whatever it’s got. Charlotte is going to be no exception. It could be fairly cool there as well. Of course, it’s a downhill track, so it’s pretty fast. St. Louis also, great racetrack. Good barometer. The Pro Stock car, anything that is naturally aspirated benefits from that. That place can be extremely fast, as well.
Q: I hate to bring it up, but you did start off but cooled since Chicago. Do you think you can recapture that magic and get going again?
JASON LINE: Well, I hope so. I mean, it’s hard to say. That’s the one thing about racing. No matter how it looks on paper, you still got to go up there and do it. It can be unpredictable. It is unpredictable. There’s no telling. We’ve done it before. Again, the Countdown has been both good to us and a curse in the past. It comes down to getting that great start at Charlotte and trying to get momentum on your side. I’m crossing my fingers. Again, I don’t believe in luck. So we’re working hard to try to make sure we’ve got our act together, both of our Summit Camaros and Bo Butner with his KB Racing prepared car, that we’re all good and ready to go when Charlotte starts.
Q. Now that the Playoffs are about to begin, I’m not sure how this worked during the regular season, but during the Playoffs, is there such a thing as information sharing among you, Greg and Bo, or do you kind of button down to what you’re doing to keep it to yourself?
JASON LINE: No, it doesn’t work that way with us. We’ve always shared things. Of course, I do the engine tuning on all three of those cars. They’re going to notice if I hide something from them, that’s for sure. We don’t do that. I feel like for us to win the championship, it’s going to take all three cars to run well, not just one. I think that’s the advantage of having a multi-car team. We will certainly use that to our advantage.
Q. Would it surprise you if Bo wins a round in this thing, being a rookie?
JASON LINE: At this point, I’m not sure anything would surprise me. No, I mean, Bo has been a champion before. He can drive. He’s certainly capable. Obviously if Greg or myself don’t win, he’s next in line. He’s been a great customer and a great friend and a joy to be around. If he wins, I’d be very happy for the man.
Q. I have to ask you a question from Kurt Busch. He said, How come you weren’t over at the drag strip today?
JASON LINE: I got stuff going on. We got some dyno’ing to do, things to test. Tell Kurt that I’m busy. We’ll be there tomorrow. How is that?
Q. The other thing that he wanted to know, and I want to know, are you having some late-season issues with your clutches that you’re working on desperately?
JASON LINE: No, not that I’m aware of anyway. The only clutch problem is me letting it out on time. That’s the only problem we have with the clutch, as far as I know.
Q. How confident do you feel with just having to hold on for six races, that the competition won’t make it almost impossible?
JASON LINE: Well, nothing’s impossible, I guess. I mean, I don’t know. I’m not willing to trade places with anybody else, other than maybe Greg or Bo. Actually, I’d like to trade places with Bo. His car is really good right now. Again, we’ve got a great team, great folks behind us here. I’m not going to trade places with anybody.
MODERATOR: Ron Capps is the driver of the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger RT. Ron, your five wins ties you in the season for the amount of wins you’ve got in any one season. Gaze into your crystal ball. How many more wins is it going to take out of those six to hoist the championship trophy Sunday night in Pomona?
RON CAPPS: Man, I don’t know. I can tell you you’re going to need probably semifinals, at least, throughout the Countdown. You might be able to have a hiccup here and a hiccup there, maybe have a second round. But as we’ve seen in the past, there have been teams that have gone from fifth and higher that have just come alive and won races in the Countdown, gone on to have big wins near the end of the Countdown. That’s sort of what we’re trying to do, keep going. We had a pretty good streak going with the wins. Then the final rounds up through Brainerd, lost a close one, didn’t get in the final. Sonoma we didn’t feel we were that good, got to the final. We won the Seattle makeup race. Those wins are great. But it’s the ones we let get away that will hurt you at the end of the year when you look back. We’re going to just try to keep winning rounds.
Q: You talk about winning rounds. I think you only have one first-round loss this year. It sounds simplistic. But is that the key to this, you have to win the first round because you have to go rounds?
RON CAPPS: Well, I was just told by Jeff Wolf, my publicist, we had the most bonus points during the Indy race. Not that I’m acting surprised, but throughout the weird weekend we had, having to go to a backup car, wrecking that car in the first round of the shootout, that was the biggest thing I was thinking about until I thought, I’m going to get hurt here entering at this speed. I’m pulling on the brake thinking, This car has been so good, I don’t want to ruin it. Man, I don’t know. Looking back at the weekend, finding out we had the most qualifying points, that is what has cost us the championship in the past. We’ve lost those little points and we’ve lost the championship by less than a round. I know I have for sure a few of those times I finished second. I know Tobler worked real hard on being aggressive in qualifying. Look what happened, track records, number one qualifying, taking those little small points. Those little points are going to win the championship, there’s no doubt about it. If you can do that three or four times out of qualifying, that’s going to add up to half a round here, half a round there. By the end of the year, if you sit back and total it, it’s going to be several rounds of just those little points.
Q: Might be still a little bit too early. I know your crew is working now. Do you have any idea what car you’re going to run in Charlotte? Will it be the one that you end up the finishing the Indy event with, or are the front halving the one that went in the sand? Do you know where that stands?
RON CAPPS: That’s what is great about Rahn Tobler. I bragged about it. He had that car ready to run. We brought it out, first full run it went mid 90. First pass, I shut it off early, it was going to run a high 380. We’re going to continue running that car. That is the car that won us Pomona, the Winter Nationals, this year. We parked it after Vegas. We went back to the shop, like you said. I know John was filming. They were going to front half the car we wrecked. They cut the front half off. Tobler called me this morning, I got this from him. They cut it off and found out it was damaged much worse than they thought. We’re pulling out a 2013 car. It was a pretty darn good car. We ran it 2012, 2013. They front halved it. It’s going to be the backup to our backup. It’s going to go upstairs. That won a lot of races with Tobler and me. We’ll run the car we started Monday at the Nationals with and continue that on at Charlotte.
Q. You’re in the middle of the week off after the U.S. Nationals before you go into this championship run. I’m sure that your crew members love to have the week off to get everything prepared. How do you as a driver like the week off or do you kind of wish you were going straight away into a race?
RON CAPPS: Good question. Throughout this year, we went East Coast swing, won those races. I didn’t want a break at all. I wanted to keep going. As we’ve all talked about, everybody here on this call, everybody is sort of tidied up their tune-ups. While we knew a few months ago it seemed like there were only a few good Funny Cars, as we all thought obviously, there are 16 really good cars and there’s legitimately 10 of them that could jump up and win the championship. Everybody’s got their stuff together. It’s going to be a much-needed break this weekend off I think for our team, I know, and I think a lot of them. They’re embracing this weekend off. It’s all-out war starting in Charlotte. You have to go on offense. You can’t think about one second of going defense. It goes back to what Scott just said. Those little points I talked about, you have to stay aggressive on offense and you have to show up there. Many of the races we won, I feel like Tobler and our team won it before we even did the burnouts. The intimidation, you sometimes force another team to push harder than they want to will force them into mistakes. So I think that weekend off is going to be nice. I know it will be good for me. I’m a little sore. I think just kind of taking it easy and getting ready to come out strong and fresh next week, it will be good for everybody.
Q. While I was in Indy for the U.S. Nationals, I spent some time talking with Goodyear. They seem to say that all the drivers felt a lot more comfortable with the tires this year. How do you feel about the tires?
RON CAPPS: Well, it’s kind of like anytime Tobler asks me about the tires we run on the car, how they felt each run or warmup. If I don’t say anything to him, I don’t even notice anything. If there’s a slight vibration, I may mention it to him. That’s within us balancing our tires. I have the utmost confidence in any situation. I didn’t even think about the tire change till you just mentioned it that they made. I don’t think Goodyear gets enough credit. The teams in nitro, what we do to these tires, I don’t even like watching the slow-mo, watching that tire. It’s unbelievable to see what it does. We for the most part don’t have any issues. So I’ll tell you, it’s a lot of trust that any Top Fuel or Funny Car driver has when we don’t even bat an eye, jump in these things and go 330 plus and not even worry about these Goodyear tires underneath. I see no problem. I know Tobler has had no issues, nor has any of our team, any of our Funny Car or Top Fuel teams.
Q. Fans see every track being identical. Of the remaining six races, which one do you think will be the most challenging for the Funny Car driver?
RON CAPPS: Oh, man, that’s a good question. Most challenging? If you get weather and you get some sunshine, St. Louis could possibly be a little more challenging because you get the humidity there. Maple Grove is just all-out brute horsepower, strap your belts as tight as you can and hang on. You’re going to have the front end light. There’s going to be guys and girls that are going to lose rounds when they’ve run the quickest they’ve ever run. That’s the type of track that is. Gosh. Yeah, I’d have to say probably St. Louis out of all of them might be a little more challenging if you get the heat and sun out.
Q. You have the title now that nobody wants to have. You’re the greatest guy who has never won a championship. How does that weigh on you, the winningest driver that never won a championship? You’ve been there so many times.
RON CAPPS: It doesn’t weigh on me. I’m sure the guy that’s the third in line as the winningest driver… That gets mentioned, I automatically think of Doug Kalitta. I think he’s one of the most talented drivers we have in the sport. I know it doesn’t weigh on him either. I know the time is going to come. But for me I’m okay with it because I wake up in the morning and I started in this sport as a crew guy and worked my way up. I’m the American dream, if you will. I wanted to drive someday, but had to start from the very bottom wiping tires. I had people let me hang around their cars and learn and worked my way into a driver job. I’ve done it for a living. I have a house, a family, that this sport of NHRA has given me. But since the very beginning, I’ve done it for the love of just racing, driving a racecar. The championships, I never sat down as a kid, and I can’t give you some story as a five-year-old I said someday I’m going to be a world champion. I never thought about being a Mello Yello champion. I just wanted to be a racecar driver and I wanted to drive a Funny Car. It will come, I’m sure. We got a great team. But, no, to answer your question, it doesn’t weigh on me. I know this Countdown has changed things, the way things are looked at a little bit. But I’m pumped. I have one track I never won on personally, it’s the Maple Grove track. I’ve never won there. Come close. I think this could be the year.
MODERATOR: Next up we have Antron Brown, driver of the Matco Tools dragster. Antron, everybody has been kind of talking about those first-round losses. That’s pretty impressive, only one first-round loss for you and your Matco team all season long. Is that going to be the key in the Countdown, is to limit those early losses?
ANTRON BROWN: Absolutely. When you get into the Countdown, in any race, for one, you need to qualify well. That’s our main focus going in, is not to leave one stone unturned. We got to capitalize on those bonus points also through qualifying, then get in a good qualifying spot, in that top eight, so you can actually have lane choice. It’s tough to qualify in the top eight. We fell out of that a couple times this year. I guarantee, that’s what contributed to one of our first-round losses, not being in that top eight. The thing about it is is every point is crucial. I look at the Countdown each and every year as not just six races. There’s 24 rounds up for grabs. Each round is worth 20 points. That’s your maximum points. How many of those rounds can you get? That’s what we focus on, is just doing one round at a time and getting as many rounds as possible. Last year we did a great job at it. But this year is going to be a whole ‘nother ball of wax where the competition has stepped up again to just an incredible level to go out there and try to make that happen like we did last year.
Q: Do you even look at qualifying rounds the same way, to try to gobble up some of those little points?
ANTRON BROWN: Absolutely. Absolutely. When you look at four qualifying rounds, there’s 12 points. There’s 12 bonus points out there that are up for grabs. 12 points in one race, I mean, I remember before with Doug, this year at the beginning of the year, me and him were bouncing around from first to second place by just going through qualifying. Took first place back from him in qualifying, he took it back from me next round by three points. So those points add up really big and they can make one round into a round and put you ahead of somebody where they have to win a round of racing to get around you and go ahead of you. Those points are just crucial when you add them up for four races. There’s 48 points available right there, which that’s a lot of points. Actually more than 48, there’s 72 points. 12 points a race times six. That’s 72 points right there.
Q: We just solidified the 10 cars in the field Monday, even seeing Terry (McMillen) and Leah (Pritchett) battling it out for that 10th spot. From 1 to 10, this is a pretty stout group of cars all across the board. Nothing is going to be a gimme in these six races, is it?
ANTRON BROWN: Oh, absolutely not. Just to make the field, that’s what took so long to get in there. You look at how like Leah and Terry, they had to battle to make the top 10. When you look down, Tony (Schumacher) swapped spots with Brittany (Force). He went around Brittany by winning the race. All these spots are so close and tight, man, it’s going to be a crapshoot going here for these six races for the championship. Those are the challenges we all live for. We live for these moments to go out there as a team, as a whole, to see who can be that champion at the end of the year. That’s what we’ve been working for. We put the hard work in with our Matco Tools Toyota, Pennzoil dragster to go out here and compete at this high level. Now just hoping all of our hard work pays off right now.
Q. Of the tracks that you’re going to be facing over the final six races, which one do you think as a driver gives you the most challenge?
ANTRON BROWN: I think the one that gives us the most challenge with the ones that we have left is that it’s always up in the air is Dallas. Dallas is the one that’s always up in the air because we can have a cool track or we can have a really hot racetrack. When Dallas gets hot, it can vary from lane to lane where it can become a one-lane racetrack, and if the weather is good, it doesn’t matter what lane you’re in. Dallas has always been in a challenge because of the weather. St. Louis, we’ve been going there now to where the weather has been good the last couple years, we’ve been running low ETs throughout race day, low to mid 70s all day long because the weather is cool. Reading that is a throw-down fest. Pomona, the weather is always great there. Vegas is always good into the fall where it gets cool weather, the sun can be out, but the wind blows a little bit but the track is good because of the dry air. The first race at Charlotte, that racetrack can be a little tricky sometimes. If you’re going on the stats of the last five years, it’s been phenomenal there. People can throw low ET down, almost a world record run on Friday night, then race day has been really good where we run mid to high 70s on race day. I think Dallas is definitely the one that is the challenging racetrack for the Countdown.
Q. How confident are you personally that this is going to end up with the championship trophy?
ANTRON BROWN: I’m confident in my team. The thing about it for me is that I have no regrets each and every race that I go to race at. I put the work in every week. I work hard. My team works hard. Brian and Mark are always studying the data, breaking down different formulas, they’re making different graphs to be better each and every week. When I go into the Countdown race, I’m going in with the team, the only thing we can do is lose the championship because we have all the necessary key pieces and ingredients to win this championship, like we did last year. When we go in, we have to go in with our same mindset and focus. I feel confident. I feel confident we can compete at the level that it takes to be there at the last race to have a chance to win this championship. I’m very confident in that.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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