NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series world championships will be decided in Funny Car, Pro Stock, and Pro Stock Motorcycle at the Auto Club NHRA Finals, and, interestingly, in each case, the battle for the title revolves around teammates.

In Funny Car, points leader Ron Capps will try to fend off Don Schumacher Racing teammates Matt Hagan and Tommy Johnson Jr. In Pro Stock, Jason Line will try to hold off his Ken Black Racing/Summit stablemate, Greg Anderson. And in Pro Stock Motorcycle, the battle is between Screamin’ Eagle Vance & Hines Harley riders Eddie Krawiec and Andrew Hines, with Jerry Savoie's screaming Suzuki right there to challenge both.

Here’s a look at some of the emotions of those involved heading into the season finale.

RON CAPPS

With an 86-point lead, Capps admits to feeling some, but not complete, relief.

“Definitely a little bit looser going into Pomona than we were going into Vegas. We had it decently going into Vegas. With two races left, you start to I guess whittle down the amount of rounds left more than — and sort of run them out of rounds trying to catch it than anything else.

“Yeah, it's by far not over. We still need to get there and do our business and clinch it. I've seen some pretty miraculous things happen at Pomona over the years, and we definitely don't want to be one of those statistics.”
 

Earlier this season, Capps figured that an average of a semifinal finish during the six-race Countdown to the Championship would ensure the Funny Car championship.

“I said to the media that I thought to win a championship it was going to have to be a semifinals-or-better average in the Funny Car division. Then my teammate Tommy Johnson Jr. went on a roll, and he was in a bunch of final rounds, and we were next to him for several of those, and I thought, ‘Uh-oh, he's going to prove us wrong; you're going to have to be in final rounds, just how tight the Funny Car division is.’ But we were able to keep the pressure on and gain those points in qualifying, and here we are.”
 

Despite the big lead, he’s feeling both relief and pressure — and has the math of the scenarios down cold.

“It's a little of both. A lot of people, even on our team, are saying it's sewn up, and I just keep holding my hand out going, ‘No, stop; stop thinking that way.’ Right now, it's 86 points. We need to keep that above 80 points to be realistic and know that we're going to for sure clinch without having any pressure of having something go wrong on Sunday. And if we gain those qualifying points and match Hagan's team or gain more of those qualifying points than they do, we'll keep it above 80, and I say above 80 because then they have to go 100 to pass us, and that's more than what's there for Sunday at Pomona.

“If they gain the points and out-qualify us and get it below 80, then we obviously have to win first round to clinch it, but you just don't know. You don't want to assume anything.”
 

Who’s the first person he’ll call if he does win the championship?

“It would probably be, maybe, Don Prudhomme. He was such a big mentor for me as a professional, my first owner and driving for him for almost a decade as one of my heroes, probably him.”
 

Capps is a California boy, and clinching at his “home track” in Pomona would make it even more special.

“When you tow back at Pomona, you go right in front of the grandstands, and historically this race is packed, and I'm sure we're probably going to have a sellout like we have had at a lot of these races this year, being that it's going to be good weather, it's the end of the year, and it's the Finals.

“Somebody asked me about [clinching at] Vegas, and I said I'm almost glad we didn't clinch it there because the historical value that you get at Pomona with Wally Parks and his name right there and the fact that it's Pomona, it just could not be better, and on top of it, it's the 50th birthday of the Funny Car, and it's been counting down all year long, and it's been fun to celebrate that all year long. We'll have all the hitters, all my heroes, Funny Car guys, probably at the track, so I just couldn't think of a better weekend to do it."
 

On battling his teammates for the title …

“The hardest battles I have are against my teammates, and here we are fighting for a championship, and the three guys behind me basically are my teammates.

“It has been tough, especially when they're sharing information; our crew chiefs are close. That's made it a little tougher. But it's good that everybody has been able to stay friends ... Monday through Friday at least.”

GREG ANDERSON

Anderson and Line have battled all year for Pro Stock supremacy, yet they have remained true teammates, working on one another’s cars, somehow balancing their competitiveness with their joint mission.

“We've been together a long time, and, you know, we work as one around here at KB Racing. We try to make each other's car as fast as we can every day of our life, and we have a great battle. When we put the helmet on, obviously, and stage, you don't want to beat anybody more than you want to beat your teammate. It's like a brother, like you want to pick on your brother. So it's a battle then, but in the downtime in between and the time at the shop here and the time leading up to the race, we're one. We work as one.”
 

The duo monopolized the winner’s circle the first half of the season before others started to close in just as the Countdown was starting.

“We've been scared to death that after the dream season that we've had that come Countdown time, come playoff time, it's going to be a different story; it's going to be hard to close the deal. It's been a lot of sweat and a lot of nervous nights and a lot of nervous days, and we certainly made our mistakes through the Countdown. We've raced pretty good, fairly well, but we've made mistakes at several of the races, and thank the Lord that some of the other guys have, too, so it's kind of swapped back and forth.

“We've each landed blows to each other throughout the races, and we've come out with more knocks in the nose I guess than the rest of them, so we've been fortunate. But yeah, we've been scared the whole time. You just don't want a season like this, with the dominance we had early, to go up in flames and not get the deal closed, but just because you had a great early season or midseason, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't get you anything. When you reset the playoffs, it's game on, start over. Everybody starts from scratch, and that huge points advantage we had went away, so we had to regroup and find an extra gear.”
 

Although Shane Gray is mathematically in the hunt, too, it would take an epic collapse for one of them not to win.

“I don't really think realistically — barring lightning striking, Jason not qualifying or me not qualifying — I don't really think anybody can catch Jason for the title except me, and I can be caught from behind for second place if I stumble. As long as he qualifies, nobody can catch him for the title. Hopefully, it comes down to we do our job in qualifying, it comes down to a two-car battle, and the dream scenario, obviously in our mind, if we can make our way through competition on Sunday, qualify well, and on opposite sides of the ladder make our way through the rounds on Sunday and match up in the final round for all the marbles, that would be a dream come true just to have that opportunity."
 

If it came down to a winner-take-all final round, Anderson says he is prepared.

“I've got a lot of stuff in my pocket. Every race I've got medals from soldiers. I've got a good-luck charm from my wife. I've always got something in my pocket, so it may be something different come Pomona, but there's always going to be what I consider a lucky something in my pocket, and I usually have a medal or something taped to the dashboard in the race car, and yeah, if people tell you they're not superstitious when it comes to things like this, they're probably lying.

“I will try anything. I'll take anything; I'll try anything. I'll take a chance on anything that could possibly help me.”

ANDREW HINES AND EDDIE KRAWIEC

Hines and Krawiec are currently tied for the Pro Stock Motorcycle points lead, with Jerry Savoie and his Suzuki just three points back, and right now, priority No. 1 is a Harley championship.

Hines: “We both have the desire to want to win this race, so we're going to do whatever we can to try and take out the alligator that's chasing us.”

Krawiec: “Our goal is to bring the championship back to Harley-Davidson and, obviously, Vance & Hines. In my eyes, it's kind of irrelevant who does it right this minute. We just want to bring it back.”
 

The Harleys have not always been the quickest bikes, but they’ve been the most consistent.

Hines: “I wouldn't say we've dominated. I think the only race we really had a big advantage was probably Reading, and we just had our tune-up spot-on there. You can see by the field, there's people going quicker at these last couple races than they were going at Reading, where you had air where you're supposed to go that fast.

“We've probably won four or five races this year between the two of us that we should not have won. We didn't have the fastest bikes on the property. We just had more consistent motorcycles, and come Sunday, we were able to tune on them a little bit and keep them in the window where they were happy.”

Krawiec: “I think this year, Andrew and I have been brought to a better level of riding. Definitely with the level of competition, there's about eight or 10 bikes on any given weekend that could possibly win, and when you sneak out of there with the win when you shouldn't, it's definitely high-fived by the team guys when we get back to the back because that's a weekend that the rider carried the bike, and there's been many weekends that the bike has carried the rider. It's definitely good to win on a weekend where you know you pulled it off.”
 

Savoie’s Suzuki engines come out of the Vance & Hines shop, too, so even though he’s challenging them for the title, there’s a sense of pride in it for them.

Krawiec: “At one point in time, there was 15 out of 16 motorcycles qualified were running Vance & Hines engines. It definitely is something that we take pride in, we look forward to, and no matter who it is that beats us, if they've got a Vance & Hines engine, they're a team guy in any aspect of it, and we do take pride in it when every individual goes out there and does well. And to be quite honest, we try to help out some of the guys when they're maybe struggling a little bit or not going down the right road. We do what we can to make sure that they have the best equipment under them and can get the job done.”
 

With past successes at the track for both, Pomona might play into the Harley riders’ hands more than for Savoie.

Hines: “Pomona [has] a downhill racing surface there, so that'll benefit the heavier bikes, so it'll be easier to accelerate them than like Vegas, where it's slightly uphill. That'll help us out a little bit. Obviously, with being a V-twin without a fairing, we're at an aerodynamic disadvantage, so it's still going to be tough on that aspect of it, but we've had a pretty decent track record there. I think Eddie has been to eight straight finals there and won a handful of them. We've got good notes for that track.

“We'll be bringing parts out there, and I think we can find a little bit more of an edge, and hopefully, if we can find another one or two-hundredths, it'll get us closer to Jerry, where hopefully he doesn't gobble up all the little bonus points in qualifying, and we need to keep him behind us going into Sunday, that way we don't have to go around past him.”