NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

The gloves have been tossed down and the callouts made for the first round of Sunday’s Pep Boys NHRA All-Star Funny Car Callout at the Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals.

Coming into the callout preliminaries, held in the Top Eliminator Club at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, the general consensus was that Bob Tasca III would use his first pick to call out No. 2 Ron Capps, as Robert Hight did last year, but Tasca threw a monkey wrench into those plans.

“It's a big decision, but I really don't care who it is,” he said. “Anyone back [stage], if I make the slightest mistake, is going to send me home. We feel very confident that our race car, if we do what we need to do, we'll win, so I'm gonna have a little fun with this.”

He then asked for Ford fans in the crowd, picked one, and she picked Cruz Pedregon as his opponent.

“It's an honor to be called out and an honor to be a part of this,” said Pedregon. “This is a top group of drivers throughout the year, and even though we haven't had the best car of the first half year, I think we got something here for this weekend.”

Capps, after breathing a sigh of relief, was up next, and chose Paul Lee, whose co-crew chief, John Medlen, was a mentor for Capps’ crew chief, Dean  "Guido” Antonelli.

“I was thinking that Tasca was gonna call me out until about 18 seconds ago, so I had Guido and the whole crew on the phone. We had somebody on our team who decided to go to another team. He was retiring. and he was one of my mentors. We all looks up to him, but we just felt like he retired a little too early and left and then came right back out on another Funny Car. So Guido wanted to call out Paul Lee and John Medlen.”

Matt Hagan was up next and called out Alexis DeJoria.

“My crew guys are excited about it. I'm excited about it. We always can use a little extra bonus and just want to put on a great show for all of the fans out here, I think me and Alexis have been battling it out back and forth a lot, so let's kind of keep that going.”

I've had a lot of battles with him, so that's been good,” she said. “He's a good racer. Doesn't play any games, doesn’t pull any punches, just straight up. It’ll be a good round.

That left Chad Green and J.R. Todd as the final pair by default, both of them racing in their first Pep Boys Callout.

“I kind of thought I would probably end up with J.R., and I was so excited to be in my first Callout but it was super nervous backstage,” Green said. “J.R. is a tough competitor and we've had some good races last year. We're ready to get it on.”

Said Todd, coming off a tough weekend in Brained two weeks ago, “I've never been in the shootout, and this is something I grew up watching as a kid, coming here since 1992 or '93, so to finally get our shot to race for some big money after all that the crew guys have been through the past week and a half, this would be the ultimate way to pay them back.”

The first round of the Pep Boys Funny Car All-Star Callout takes place at 1:05 p.m. ET on Sunday, Sept. 1, with the semifinals at 2:40 p.m. and the final round at 4:30 p.m. A special broadcast of the Callout takes place on FOX at 5 p.m. ET on Sunday.