ESPN NHRA

	Capps

St. Louis was a tough weekend for the entire NHRA drag racing community. We might not always get along, be the best of friends or go to dinner, but when a tragedy happens, it's really inspiring to see how the racing population rallies together. Anytime we lose a peer it makes it really difficult, but when we lose someone that you know, like and consider a friend, it makes it that much more difficult to accept.

St. Louis was definitely a bittersweet weekend for our Snake Racing Funny Car. We had our best finish of the year after advancing to the semifinals, but after Darrell Russell's accident, racing just didn't seem as important. I've known Darrell for some years now. Before I started driving Top Fuel in 1995, I worked my way up the sportsmen ranks (Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series). Darrell was a lot like Blaine Johnson where he was a successful Top Alcohol Dragster competitor with loads of talent. I knew a long time ago that he was going to be a star in drag racing. If I owned a team, he's the kind of driver you would want to represent your organization. You've heard all the great things about Darrell and what a great guy he was and all of it was true. He was a rising star and his passing is a tremendous loss for all of auto racing, not just NHRA drag racing.

The race at Gateway International Raceway is the halfway mark of the NHRA POWERade Series season and offers a much needed two-week break from racing. I don't think the recess from racing was ever more needed than after the St. Louis race. You read on ESPN.com often how I talk about the importance of spending time with family and enjoying your time away from the drag strip because all of us involved in the NHRA arena lead such hectic lives. I took a much-needed vacation with my family after we got home from the Gateway to the West. We loaded up in the motor home and headed north to Central California near where I grew up and spent a week at Lake San Antonio. It's was certainly nice to spend time with the family and just relax on the lake and mess around with the Sea Doos and other watercraft. I grew up nearby, so I got to see some friends that I grew up with and don't get to see very often, along with my parents, John and Betty, who still live in the area. After that, we drove even farther north and spent last weekend at The Delta. It's hard to explain what The Delta is. It's like thousands of canals and little waterways that lead to the Bay Area. I did some water skiing and learned to wakeboard.

The two-week break also gave the crew guys a nice break from racing. I've always said these are the hardest-working guys in the sport. They have to drive the haulers across the country and put in the long hours at the race track, while we drivers and crew chiefs can fly to the races and get to spend more time at home. It's great when the crew guys can get a few days away from the shop to just relax and hang out and not worry about drag racing for a few days.

My guys are really fired up about the second half of the 2004 NHRA season. There's no denying that we struggled through the first 12 races of the season, but since Roland Leong has joined our crew, we've improved our consistency and there's no doubt in my mind that we'll be a player in the Funny Car wars for the remainder of the season. The green Snake Racing crew has a few first-year crew members. Guys like Sammy Schoolcraft and John Scherzer have done a great job adapting, while my veteran guys like Todd and Scotty Okuhara, Tom Boyington and Fred Stover have been great at not only serving in their current role, but helping to tutor the new guys.

This week, we begin arguably the most rigorous three-week swing on the entire tour with the "Western Swing" at Bandimere Speedway in Denver. If you've never been to Bandimere, add it to the list of NHRA races you must attend. The Top Eliminator Club at Denver is the most scenic on the circuit. It's a beautiful facility and even though the cars don't run as quick and fast because of the elevation, it's still terrific racing with the most picturesque backdrop on the circuit.

The Denver race might be the trickiest on the schedule for the crew chiefs. We leave St. Louis where we're running 4.80s and the first run off the trailer at Bandimere might be a 5.20. It seems like it takes forever to get to the finish line. The altitude at Bandimere Speedway is 5,860 feet; that's nearly 6,000 feet above sea level. Our cars require oxygen to produce 8,000 horsepower and at Denver, the air is very thin. Therefore, the tuners have to compensate for that by putting more compression in the engine. They'll also spin the supercharger faster and do a few other tricks to make up for the lack of oxygen.

After Denver, we go straight to Pacific Raceways near Seattle where the elevation is 280 feet. Talk about a complete 180. That's what makes our crew chiefs so talented. To go from one extreme to the exact opposite and still produce great results really shows how talented these guys are. That's why they earn the big bucks and tune us to those amazing elapsed times and speeds. The drivers get all the glory, but the crew chiefs are what make it happen. They give us a race car capable of winning on Sunday and that's all we can ask for.

And winning rounds is something that you're going to see from Don Prudhomme's two Funny Cars during the second half of the 2004 season. Tommy Johnson qualified second at St. Louis with a career-best E.T. and speed and I advanced to the semifinals. We've got a terrific group in the Snake Racing tech trailer with Mike Green and Johnny West on TJ's car and Roland Leong and Dave Hutchens on my car. Mike and Roland might have a different approach to tuning a Funny Car, but our recent results should be proof that things are heading in the right direction and we're going to be a force in the Funny Car class.

Ron Capps drives a Funny Car in the NHRA for Don Prudhomme. He is providing a diary to ESPN.com throughout the 2004 season. The team's Web site can be found at www.snakeracing.com.