NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

If you’re Ron Capps, still soaking in the glory of one of the greatest moments in Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals history, what do you do for an encore?

Last year, Capps honored his former car owner, drag racing legend Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, by running a throwback paint scheme on his NAPA Auto Parts GR Supra celebrating Prudhomme’s early 1970s Hot Wheels machine. With “the Snake” himself in attendance, Capps wrote a storybook tale by winning the sport’s biggest event.

So, how can he top that this year?

"Last year was unbelievable," he mused. "Months later, people were still talking about it. But the one thing I keep hearing is, there's only one car that's probably cooler, in the history of NHRA Funny Cars, and that was the Army car."

From 1974 through 1980, Prudhomme flew the red, white, and blue colors of Army sponsorship on some of the sport’s most successful cars, not the least of which was the Army Monza, which won 13 of 16 events over the 1975-76 seasons.

The mere mention of the Army car always triggered a flood of nostalgia. Capps remembers as a kid the excitement of ripping open the model kit for the famed car only to spill glue on one of the rear tires. 

"Dad was so mad," he chuckled, shaking his head at the memory. "It was like a lesson thing for my dad — teaching me patience. I was so impatient, and that glue on the tire, man, it haunted me forever.

“But the Army car was more than just a machine; it was a symbol, an aspiration. I wanted to join the Army just because of that car," Capps admitted. "It was such an epic thing."

And even before last year’s triumphant win was even in the bag, that seed was already being planted for 2024.

"Dave Marek, who’s been a longtime friend and designed most of our cars, including the Hot Wheels car, was in our lounge at last year’s race, and he just started freehand drawing. And what does he sketch? The Army car," recalls Capps.

"He goes, ‘Here's what you need to do next year,’ and I was like, ‘Holy cow.’ When he got home, within a few weeks, he did the first rendering, and it was incredible. He showed up at Pomona this year with 10 different drawings, different variations."

But even as the idea continued to germinate in Capps’ mind, he had bigger problems on his hand as his 2024 season rolled along without the typical amount of Ron Capps success. After all, he was contemplating putting one of the sport’s most iconic paint schemes on his hot rod and needed the performance to represent it.

"Our 2024 season wasn’t going great, and I thought, ‘We don't need a distraction,’ but everywhere I went, people kept asking, ‘What are you going to do at Indy? Are you going to bring the same car out? Are you going to run Hot Wheels?’ “

It wasn’t until May in Indianapolis, where Capps and his mentor Prudhomme, who will be the grand marshal at this year's Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals, had traveled for the Indy 500, that he even let “the Snake” in on the idea.

“It was really early in the morning, and we were at the airport,” he remembers. “He was half-asleep when I showed him the renderings on my phone, and, man, when he saw it, he grabbed my phone, zooming in and out, just couldn’t believe it.

"When I first brought it up, ‘Snake’ was like, ‘Man, I don’t know. The kind of season you’re having, you’re gonna need a hot rod to back up this paint scheme.’ But I told him that ‘Guido’ [crew chief Dean Antonelli] felt like he was getting a better handle on things."

With Prudhomme’s buy-in, Capps, as he had done last year, still needed approval from Katherine Wooten at NAPA and his partners at Toyota, whose typical spots on the car again would be moved or even downsized at the most important race of the year.

"Last year, I felt a little bad with that Hot Wheels car, and I told Katherine, ‘Hey, we can add NAPA on the front of the car here and there,’ but she said, ‘No, it’s going to take away from what you want to do with the throwback.’ She came right back this year and said, ‘We were extremely proud of what you did last year, and we understood it.’ It was like, ‘Wow, they get it. They understand this is bigger than just a sponsor doing a throwback. This is a huge deal for the fans.’ It wasn’t just about running a race; it was about living up to a legacy."

He pulled it off last year with the Hot Wheels car, but can he march the Army car back into the winner’s circle this year?

“Yeah,” he acknowledged of the pressure to again climb that mountain. “Indy is enough pressure by itself, so it’s always going to be hard to win. But my crew is also going to be wearing throwback uniforms, so to see that and to see ‘Snake’ standing on the starting line again, watching his Army car trying to win the U.S. Nationals, man … that’s pressure.”