The following are excerpts from a teleconference featuring NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series drivers Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle), Greg Anderson (Pro Stock), Leah Pritchett (Top Fuel), and Ron Capps (Funny Car).
THE MODERATOR: Gainesville does mark the start of your season. Where are you guys in preparations after you left Pomona back in November?
ANDREW HINES: We’re starting to get ramped up here to head out on the road for testing here early next week. Engines are going together for their final specs for what we have decided on over the winter, and we’re getting closer and closer by the minute. We’re still waiting on some new paint to show up from our painter for the bodies we are going to debut here in Gainesville, and all in all, it’s been a very productive off-season and I can’t wait to get back out there. It’s been a long four months for our motorcycle guys and I can’t wait to swing a leg over my Harley next Monday and test. I have not been on my race bike since that last Sunday there at the finals. It’s always a fairly uneventful off-season for us here. We spend most of our time working on developing horsepower on our dyno. It’s not conducive for us to drive 1,000 miles or more down to Florida or southern Georgia to go test. We focused more of our time on research and development and we try to put all our eggs in one basket for this first test session and see what shakes out for what we like. Worst case we always keep a couple engines like we had at the end of the previous season. We have a couple of good backups and we’ll have four brand new bullets ready to go and we’ll come out shooting in Gainesville.
Q. Not everybody, obviously not everybody, can put a helmet on and jump into some calfskin and go 180-miles an hour plus on two wheels. Talk about at the level that you do this at, what’s fun about that and what’s work?
ANDREW HINES: Well, the fun part comes when you get to race on any Sunday where you get to qualify. I look forward to the first laps of qualifying every single race we go to, just to see where you’re going to shake out beginning of the weekend, and get that adrenaline rush that you’ve been missing either from the weekend prior or a month ago. It’s nice to hop on the Harley and got out there and feel the adrenaline rush. You don’t really necessarily feel it when you’re going down the track but you really noticed it when you’re pulling your helmet and gloves off after the end of the track after the turnoff, and you realize, man, that was a cool ride. We’re approaching 200 miles an hour, that’s definitely on the horizon this year, and it very well could happen at this first race. There should be some big excitement about what could possibly pop up on the score boards there in testing, let alone when we get to Gainesville the first event. It’s an eye-opening experience and it’s something that I’ve lived for for the last 15 years, and I can’t wait to get out there and do it every single test session at the beginning of the season. A little stressful when you roll up there for the first burnout, but once you get the helmet strapped on and the motorcycle revved up, it’s just like you rode yesterday.
Q. You mentioned the off-season, is there a best way to kind of not ride out or ride out what you really want to be doing and not being able to race competitively?
ANDREW HINES: I don’t get a chance to do a whole lot throughout the off-season other than we come in here and work at the shop 8:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday and most Saturdays, as well. Get my adrenaline fix I guess pushing the throttle forward on the engine dyno and listening to that thing make close to 400 horsepower every time I push the throttle forward. It’s a different level of stress when you’re sitting there watching the engine in front of you pumping out horsepower versus turning the throttle on the race bike and going down the track. It’s a different scenario but we don’t get a chance to get out and test too often like I said. We’ll put it all together here this week and send it on down the track next week.
THE MODERATOR: You mentioned the 200-mile-an-hour marker. A lot of people look at that as one of the last, great NHRA milestones to be able to hit. Do you think we’re going to see that?
ANDREW HINES: I think we’ll see that sitting on a scoreboard somewhere early in this year. It’s still really dependent on the weather conditions. But last year we had some notoriously fast runs in Charlotte will you’ve got a semi-downhill track and good weather there early on in March, April time frame. It could be one session where you might see two, three, maybe even four motorcycles run over that 200-mile-per-hour mark and it might just stack up on who goes out first that qualifying session. It could be as exciting as that, or heck, you might see maybe the last two bikes of a certain session put it upside by side. That would be pretty spectacular. We are all looking for it. I know a lot of us motorcycle guys have been trying to get it the last couple years by doing different things to get the gearing right, make changes. I got pretty good speed a couple years ago in Englishtown, and it’s just a matter of all the stars aligning correctly and finding that couple horsepower that we all need to push us to that next threshold.
Q. Just a quick question on this 200-mile-per-hour situation. Have you been that fast in practice away from the main tracks and if you have, what did it feel like?
ANDREW HINES: I ran 199.85 four years ago in testing in Valdosta, Georgia. And it really — I ran 199.23 in Englishtown two years ago. Those two runs, they feel relatively the same but we can tell subtle differences between, say, a 195, 196 run versus a 198, 199 run. It’s more on your stopping distance. You feel where you are down on the track. We’re tucked in as tight as we possibly can be going down the racetrack, and we don’t have a whole lot of bearing on speed other than the orange cones for the timing system in the center of the track. So it’s hard to tell that little bit of speed going down the track, but when you shut off, you’re like, man, I’m going past this point in the shutdown area way faster than I was the last time. And you can just feel that little difference from run to run.
Q. Have you stayed completely away from Pomona and from Phoenix, the first two events, and going to this next one is going to be the very first time you’ve been at a drag race at all?
ANDREW HINES: I did go to Pomona for the winter nationals here when the cars ran their season opener. Since I won the championship last year, I got all the hardware, the jacket, the ring, things like that. But it was a good chance to get out there and see the Pro Stock cars with their new fuel injection systems, and just get a chance to feel excitement of Mello Yello Drag Racing again and smell the nitro and smell the gasoline burning out of the natural aspirator Pro Stockers. It’s nice to get out there. But man, I was itching by the time the end of Sunday came around to swing my leg over a Harley and go down the track. If my equipment would have been there, who knows, maybe they would have let me make an exhibition run. We didn’t have everything together and it was just a good time to go out and be a fan again, sit in the stands, talk to some fans and have a good time and turned into a little mini-vacation with a little less stress of having to actually perform on Sunday.
Q. Been talking about the 200-mile-an-hour deal here. Are you going to be upset if the number pops up on the board and it’s anybody other than you and they don’t have to back it up?
ANDREW HINES: No, I don’t have a problem with the new backup rules or anything like that. Our timing system has become more consistent than it used to be. The biggest thing with the motorcycles is our speed has become way more consistent and predictable than what we have had in years past, and that’s mainly due to what NHRA implemented for us having to use what we call a wheel shield or a staging beam on our front wheel. So it gives us a more consistent time. I would be a little bit upset if it didn’t happen in my lane. I was the first one to run sub-seven seconds over ten years ago now, 2005. It would be really nice to have that chalked up on my scoreboard with the first six-second run and the first 200. Heck, if anybody other than me does it, it better be my teammates. So we’ve got to keep it in the family here.
Q. What if Michael Phillips comes out and pops it off in his first event back in a while?
ANDREW HINES: I don’t think we’re going to see that happen. Takes a while to get your stuff back in order, and I’m not sure — we’ve got a lot of great bikes in the class. The racing this year is going to be fantastic and just like you saw at the end of last year, it’s going to be a crapshoot who is going to win on any given Sunday. Just got to focus on qualifying in the top half this year, that’s going to be key.
Q. You said something about new body work coming back from the painters. Is this new body work or is this just body work getting repainted?
ANDREW HINES: No, it’s a new piece of carbon fiber but it’s the same body we’ve had for the last two years. Just new paint. Harley likes to mix it up, and we typically go a couple paint schemes every year. We are going to start out the year with the new stuff. Looks pretty good. I just got the images from the painter today. We’re excited to see what we’ve got and it’s a different look from anything we’ve had before.
Q. Along the same lines of body works, does the NHRA allow you any leeway for what fenders look like or slope of the bike, or is that all in cement?
ANDREW HINES: There’s interpretation on what it has to look like versus stock. So we have to keep a certain elevation from the top of the tank shell to the tail, and the tail is really designed basically as similar as it can be to a stock Harley V-Rod tail. Just obviously has to be proportioned big enough to fit our big ten-inch slick under there. It gets a little wider and a little longer, but for the most part — hold it right off a stock talk, just widen it a little bit fit our engine underneath it. They are involved in the whole process if we redo a body to come up, check templates and sign off on it before we start making expensive carbon fiber pieces. They do a good job of making sure the styling stays similar to what is expected for the rules and working with Harley’s styling to make sure it still meets Harley’s quality standards as far as what they want their Pro Stock bike to look like. There’s a lot of involved process to get things out there to the track.
Q. In pursuit of this 200-mile-per-hour barrier, have you looked at the shape of helmets or equipment or any of that stuff to make the air flow quicker or easier?
ANDREW HINES: Yeah, we wear Simpson Helmets right now and I’ve worked with a guy that works at Simpson for my entire career. He used to be with Bell Helmets. He moved over to Simpson, so I went along with him. And our helmet was designed in the wind tunnel to produce less drag and neutral lift versus downforce. So the air just flows pretty much right around it. It’s about as neutral a helmet as we can get to keep it stable and still be comfortable and do it’s purpose on the racetrack. Every little bit goes into it. We’ve got a really tiny wind screen we have to stay behind on our V-Rods and we have to do our best to stay tucked in, so aerodynamics is a crucial deal for us.
THE MODERATOR: You’ve got one win in Gainesville back in 2004. Talk about getting a win at the season-opening event and getting a win at such an historic facility.
ANDREW HINES: Nice to get a win early on in the season. I’ve only ever done that the one time, and that was my first national event win. It’s nice to be the points leader, leading after the first race. It takes a little pressure off. You know, the first — the hardest win to get is the first one of the season it seems like. Good job to Greg (Anderson) there by knocking it out of the park in Pomona. But we are going to try to do the same thing. I’m feeling pretty confident about what we have done here with our Harley in the off-season and we’re going to go test and hopefully we’re going to reap our benefits for all the hard work we’ve put in over the off-season. When we get out there, I guess the time ticket is going to tell the truth, but we’ll see what happens.
THE MODERATOR: Greg, with all the changes that took place in Pro Stock during the off-season, were you guys surprised about your results so early in the season, or were you guys shooting for that when you unloaded in Pomona?
GREG ANDERSON: Well, it’s definitely what you shoot for when you start the project. You start working on the R&D development project but you live in fear the whole winter: How do you know what you are going to have done by the time you get Pomona is going to stack up with the rest of the class? You’re scared that you make that first run at Pomona, regardless of what you’ve done in preseason testing, no matter where you’ve been, you never know what everybody has really got until you show up at Pomona. Yeah, we were pleasantly surprised. Certainly it was the goal, is everybody’s goal to go out and have the baddest hot rod out there. For the last three, four, five, six years, everybody has been stuck so close together, because, you know, we’ve got to work on the same package forever, ever and ever and technology certainly flows from one team to another and everybody pays attention to what everybody else does. It really has bunched up really tight and we’re shaking up the rulings like this, that it’s absolutely an opportunity to shake out maybe an early advantage to some teams. That’s what you hope for, and it seems like that’s what we’ve got. So we’re pleasantly surprised, very happy about it, but certainly not under the belief that it’s going to stay like that. The rest of these guys are going to gain on the project, and you’re learning every day with this deal. It’s all so new to all of us, we really don’t know what we’re doing at all yet. We feel very stupid and we’re learning day by day. I’m actually out testing today at zMAX, and it’s just, you learn every run down the racetrack. It’s going to change. The landscape is certainly going to change as we go forward in Gainesville and Vegas, and next year’s will look completely different. But it would be great to get off to a great start. And you can’t have an advantage on somebody if you don’t start with an advantage. So once we are able to start with an advantage, we’ll see how long we can hold onto it.
THE MODERATOR: Is it almost like starting over? Do you feel like a rookie again in a sense with this new car?
GREG ANDERSON: Absolutely. You know, we just don’t know much about it. We’ve never spent any time with any kind of fuel injection before. The whole deal with tuning your motor with a computer, I don’t even know how to turn a computer on. Just we’re kind of old school I guess. We’re used to carburetors and tuning with our hands, and now you have got to do it with a laptop computer. It’s more of the younger and new generation. That really wasn’t us. We didn’t know what we were getting into. So we are learning day by day and we had to open our minds up and just realize we knew nothing about it and be wide open to trying to learn. So we’re taking in every bit of information we can from anybody that’s been willing to help, and it’s been a team effort from a lot of people involved here. Yet somehow we’ve gotten off to a better start than the rest. Even though we are running good compared to the pack, we certainly don’t feel like we’ve got everything figured out. We certainly don’t feel smart at fuel injection yet. Hopefully that will come down the road. Going to keep digging and keep learning and we’re having fun in the meantime.
Q. A lot of the drivers consider this (Gainesville) a, quote, major. Just what makes it a major in your opinion?
GREG ANDERSON: Well, I guess all I can think back to is when I was a kid, and I wasn’t driving a race car myself. I wasn’t working doing it professionally. I was doing it as a fan, going to the races with my dad. It was just Indy and Gainesville and Pomona. Those were really the three biggest ones that you heard about and that you read about. Those were the Super Bowls the major tournaments, whatever you want to call it. It just stayed that way for years and years and years. I don’t know the math numbers on it. Are they the oldest tracks we have that have the most national events at? I don’t know. But right from the time I started going to the racetrack with my dad, you knew those were the special ones and those were the ones you wanted to jump in a camper or jump in a car to go cross-country to see.
Q. Does it have a bigger feel to it than some of the others because it is a major?
GREG ANDERSON: Absolutely positively. I think the first time that I won there, it felt like something special, something bigger. I’m glad we have that. I’m glad every one doesn’t seem exactly the same. There’s no such thing as a bad win. Obviously any win has been great but those ones that happen at the major tracks, Indy, Gainesville, your Pomona, you’re darned right they are special. Same with other sports, whether it is National Football teams, or NASCAR guys when they win at Daytona or Indy, it’s special. And that’s the way it should be. You should have some that have a little more meaning than others I guess. I’m not 100 percent for sure I guess what the real, true meaning is, but you definitely feel the difference and you definitely feel more of a sense of accomplishment when you win one. Luckily I’ve been fortunate to win some of the majors, and those trophies stay up front in the trophy case all the time.
Q. When you’re tuning these cars at the track with fuel injection or on the dyno, are you guys finding little gains or are you finding big games. It seems like other than the consistency you had at Pomona, it seems like the E.T.’s are shuffling around a lot more than when they were carbureted.
GREG ANDERSON: There’s absolutely bigger changes. It used to be with your carburetor setup and the old-time setup we had, you would change a jet or two between pulls on the dyno or even runs on the racetrack, and you would be lucky if you noticed two- or three-horsepower swing either way. Now with this type of set up, you change one hole a couple percentage points on fuel flow, and you’ll go up-and-down 20 horsepower without batting an eyelash. It’s just crazy. It’s just wild to see and wild to learn about it. We know nothing yet. It just makes you feel so stupid when you make what you feel is the equivalent of a one-jet change and you lose like 20 horse. You look at each other like what happened, did the motor break? It’s crazy. It’s taken a little getting used to, and that’s why you’re seeing discrepancies at the racetrack run to run, because it’s that easy to lose the tune on them. I think once you finally hone in on it and get a happy tune-up, maybe it will be easy to keep. But when you’re trying to hone in on it, it’s a challenge.
Q. You’re talking about how special the Gatornationals is. And is some of that due to, it’s not one of these palatial tracks like Charlotte. It’s got that old school feel and just that special feeling when you get there.
GREG ANDERSON: It does, absolutely does. It’s just something special when you walk through the gates. I guess because it’s been there so long and every time I’ve ever been to the race, like I said, whether it was with my father at a young teenage age, walking in just to watch the race. Just the magnitude of it, just the size of the grandstands, all the amount of spectator, all the cars, more cars at that race, more people at that race, alligators in a ditch, it’s just cool. Everything about it was just cool ever since I can remember. There’s a lot of things that go into making a race special. Nowadays, obviously if somebody is going to build a new race facility and want to get it on the pro schedule, they want to build a Taj Mahal like they did here at Charlotte. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a first-class major race. What really does is the history of that race: The history that Gainesville has got; the history that Pomona has got; the history that Indy has got; that’s what makes them special.
Q. I know from your history that you had a recent, not too recent, but a heart condition. And I recently had a heart attack by the way. Fortunately it wasn’t major but I’m working on it. My question is: How do you face — when you have a health problem and you overcome it and you go back to work, you go back to racing, you’re back right in the middle of what you’re actually — I want to say you’re doing not better but you’re certainly doing well after your problem. Talk a little about how you faced that.
GREG ANDERSON: Well, no question, when it first happened, it was a shock, absolutely, learning that you had to have your chest opened up and have your heart completely worked on, that was a shock. Then you do that and go through the procedure and you wake up out of that and you wonder to yourself, will I ever be healthy enough to sit back in a race car. That’s what I love to do, that’s what I’ve done all my life, and without that, what the heck am I going to do? So then you go through two to three months of sitting on a couch and trying to rehab yourself back into physical shape to be able to either go back to work, let alone get that race car. It’s just a long time to think about it and to wonder: Will I ever be healthy enough to do what I used to do? So after those three months of being on the shelf and that first time back in the race car, which was I think at the Houston race, and the first time down the racetrack, I think I asked myself 50 times strapping in the car and going down the racetrack: Am I going to be all right? Is this going to be okay? Am I still going to be able to do it? Once I hit the finish line and pop the parachutes and everything was smooth and made the turnoff, it was like a light just went on: You know what everything is going to be fine and, I am going to be able to do this again and I think I’m going to be able to do it at a high level. Since then, since that point, it’s been full speed ahead and really have no restrictions and have no reason that I can’t basically do it full speed. The doctors gave me a clean bill of health and I don’t have to do anything special and I have no concerns anymore. But you’re darned right, those first couple three months, you have every worry and every concern in the world if you’d ever be able to do it again.
Q. As a corollary to that, I interviewed Dr. Jerry Punch over in NASCAR. He’s doing college football now. Being a doctor, he has a perspective on this. He says race car drivers, when they get injured, when they come back, they actually do better. Whether they compensate, whether they do something, whether they step up, they just have something in them; do you feel like that was helpful to you?
GREG ANDERSON: I think so. Just turning that light on and the realization, you know, I’ve got a second chance. I have got a new opportunity to get this right and to do it right that by rights, didn’t know if I would have a chance to do it again. It’s just a mental thing I think. It makes your mind clear and it makes you more hungry to make the most of it this time, because who the heck knows when something else could happen where it puts you on the shelf permanently. You just realize at that point that I’ve got to make the most of this. I’ve got a second lease on this deal, I’ve got to make the most of it. You go out and give it all you’ve got, and just very fortunate to be able to do it.
Q. You’ve talked a lot about what you felt in the car and everything. Did your team hire some special young men during the off-season to help you all work through the new electronics of these cars?
GREG ANDERSON: I don’t know that we hired any young men. We did actually get some help from a man by the name of John Meaney who has got a lot of experience in the fuel injection world. He’s got his own company and he’s wrote a lot of the software that’s designed a lot of these new injection systems. He’s definitely got some knowledge. And we thought, you know, we’d better do something, because know nothing. So we were able to team up with John Meaney, and he gave us some great advice on how to — basically how to drive a laptop. That was the biggest challenge that we had. We didn’t really even know how to work the numbers on a laptop. That’s what he helped us out with the most. As far as the hard parts and building all your manifold pieces and all that stuff, we just had to go to work and start building pieces and trying pieces. And we got together with the Hogan Manifold people and they helped us through that development project. Between those two people, the Hogan Manifold people and John Meaney, we definitely had a little bit of help. But it was certainly a lot of long hours by all our guys in the engine shop, building pieces and dynoing pieces and dynoing and dynoing and dynoing, and scrapping a lot of pieces and learning a little bit here and going backward three more steps that way. It’s just been very interesting but we did have a little bit of help. But the majority of it has definitely been between Jason, myself and Rob and all our engine guys at the shop, and obviously the car guys have done a great job getting the cars rigged up, too. We didn’t ship our cars out to one of the chassis builders or anything to have everything retrofitted. We did everything in-house. It was just a lot of work but we took a lot of pride in it because most of everything we’ve done in-house.
THE MODERATOR: Leah Pritchett raced to her first Top Fuel win when she defeated Brittany Force in the finals in Phoenix. It was the first time since 1982 that an all-female Top Fuel final was contested. Pritchett used a better reaction time in the race to get ahead of Brittany Force’s car, and it was her second career Top Fuel final round appearance. Talk on that Sunday when you started going round, did it ever come into your mind, man, this could be the day we break through?
LEAH PRITCHETT: Absolutely it did. It came later in the day, actually. It was just pure realization you were going into the final round so you have a 50/50 shot of winning it. I didn’t let myself think about winning the race. You mentioned my first time around was Atlanta last year and I matched up against Antron Brown, and I remember that day thinking all throughout the day: Three more rounds to the final, two more rounds, we’re in the semis, we are going to the finals. And my attitude and my focus on that last Sunday of Phoenix was more so not letting myself think about the final round and just what’s next, what’s the next round, don’t think about final rounds because you’re not even there yet. You’re getting closer. So it really wasn’t until the semis that I thought about it, and I reverted back to in Atlanta. I was excited. I remember telling myself: Live in this moment, you’re doing something pretty spectacular going to your first final. And I think I was a little more too more focused on that, as well as wanting to win. And I remembered being that tense. So coming to Phoenix and going that final round, I treated it just like I did the first, second or third rounds. And I had some awesome input from Bob Vandergriff (car owner). We were done warming up and the car was getting pulled out to go in the lane and I was just about to get in the van — and this is where I think it really comes in for having a team owner that is also a driver. He looked at me and grabbed me on the shoulders and he said, “Leah, girl, you’ve got this, just keep doing what you’ve been doing, don’t rise to any special occasion. What you’ve been doing will be enough.” And so pretty much those last words before getting suited up and getting into the car registered to me that what we have in the hot rod is definitely enough and as long as I keep doing what I had been doing all day and what I had been doing, that that’s going to be enough. So I didn’t need to add any extra pressure. So hopefully, I look at that day and where my mental state was at and how our team operates and we just hope to duplicate that as many times as we can throughout this season.
THE MODERATOR: You join a pretty small list of overall female winners, and even a smaller list of female Top Fuel winners. What does it mean to have your name along some of the other legendary racers in NHRA?
LEAH PRITCHETT: It’s absolutely incredible. And you’re right, it’s a very small list. I believe I’m No. 9 and what I do know is that that list is going to grow exponentially. I truly do feel, with the amount of female racers that are coming up through the ranks at this moment in time. But to be No. 9 in a sport that has been around for so long; and with our sanctioning body that has really embraced the diversity of females in all-around, No. 9, it’s really incredible. And when I got that text message from Shirley on Sunday, it’s very special, and it’s something that I hold near and dear and close to my heart, as much as being a female on that list, No. 101, the different Top Fuel winners overall, is a really big amount. So I guess you’re in the ten percentile — and I’m just honored. I’m honored to do it. I can’t say that’s ever been the next focus, to be that next female. It really is just to win, just the same amount of drive and same amount of passion for the sport as every other competitor whether it be male or misdemeanor, the youngest or oldest in the class. Overall I think we share that same passion. But to be able to have that special notoriety is just kind of like having your cake and eating it, too, and in life, you don’t get to do that that often. So I’m really fortunate to be able to have that circumstance to be able to do that.
Q. Wondering what you consider your big break? And wondering how Gary is doing and if that quashed the celebration at all this weekend.
LEAH PRITCHETT: Well, I think without a doubt, my big break of getting into Top Fuel, really had to be — there’s two. I can’t just name one. The first is when Don Schumacher, back when I was — boy, I was 17 or 18 years old, and he had identified me as a potential driver to replace Gary Scelzi as he was upon retirement, and he had enabled me to get my nitro Funny Car license. So really my first taste of nitro came from Don Schumacher. So I’ll forever be grateful for that, but we weren’t table to materialize that into anything. And come four or five years later after racing Nostalgia Funny Cars and Pro Mods, the Dotes was really my very big break where they saw my potential, as well, and I was a great fit with their team. And to be able to run for the majority of three years on NHRA Mello Yello Series with them is what put me on the map. That was my stage to be in Top Fuel and to show my capability as not only a driver but a member of the team, as well, from a management standpoint. And obviously my third big break here, and I guess three time’s a charm, when you say when that team was unable to continue in 2016, would be Bob Vandergriff and I coming together and making the second team be able to continue to run on the racetrack. I can’t ever attribute it to one thing. It’s been a whole of many, but it’s a team effort by multiple different teams and so not just myself. Secondly, yes, Gary’s injuries actually happened, his initial injury of his burn happened one week before we all went testing. So that was definitely difficult, like I’m not going to hide that. But I think in this sport, it trains you mentally and emotionally to be very strong. There’s not any driver out on the track that does not have leather skin. I don’t care who you are or what color you are or male or female. You have to go through some tough stuff to be able to run out here and one of those would be if your significant other is having a difficult time. So Gary, yeah, he had to return to the hospital the Thursday before Phoenix when we were out there. He works for Steve Torrance’s Top Fuel Dragster, a competing team of ours. I had to tell myself, that’s the price you pay of being able to share your life and your dream and your passion and every bit of your life with your husband. And you get to go on those extreme ups and they are there when you win and they are there through — when you get to sign that big contract. And they are also there when you lose a deal, and at the same time, if personal things happen if your life, they happen together. So I think being able to have a strong mind really plays a big part in this. You know, come Sunday, we really — we don’t talk anyway. We’re lucky if we even wave to each other or even like catch each other’s eyes in the staging lanes because we are both downright down to business; and he is, too, he’s working on his team. But when he was sick, I knew, you know what, Monday is going to come and we’re going to get back after it. But this is a job I’ve been hired to do and a dream of mine and I’m always there by his side, but we have got some business to take care of, and we did. And people that know me know that I’m a pretty black and white person and really straightforward, and I might not be the most compassionate person in the world, but there definitely was a little bit of a wane earlier in the weekend. But let me tell you, come Sunday, being with this team has taught me to really put my blinders up a little bit more. It’s only a day that you’ve got to get through. And he ended up — I mean, he was fine. He’s making a good recovery. He’ll be on a six-month recovery total. But he’s still able to be at the track and continue his duties with Horne Racing and the most important part is that he’s going to make that full recovery. And he’s been the one that’s been the strongest out of all of this. To see somebody go through such pain as a burn in a pretty large portion of your body with skin graft, and for them to be strong throughout it really helps the other person be strong. So God works in mysterious ways and I think He just kind of made sure to turn up our strong-o meter, if you want to call it, for the beginning of the season. He’s got some pretty cool stuff in store for us this year. It’s definitely not going to be uneventful, if we’ve already gotten started off like this.
Q. As far as being a gender that really stands out in motor racing obviously, does that weigh on you at all when you’re practicing or when you finally go to the race knowing that you can set a record that basically the guys can’t; that you’ve got that ability to set a record for other women. Does that weigh on you at all?
LEAH PRITCHETT: I don’t believe it does, and I think it’s in large to for being in the sport for so long, going on 20 years. In my mind, my normal is being around men, whether it be the team or crew chiefs or team owners or sponsors. My whole life has really been surrounded by testosterone, so that’s normal. I really haven’t had the female aspect of it weigh in so much as it has here lately, which is just an increased amount of benefit. I would have never — as much as I’ve dreamed of doing this and making this a profession, I’m a realist and always tried to prepare myself for if this plan falls through. I’m not the type of person to put myself in a situation to think, man, I’m going to be the absolute person to completely look up to and set all these goals just because I’m trying to do them naturally. And the fact that they have come about and have been inspirational or have been, you know, records and mile markers set for other people is an added bonus. I think if I looked at it a little bit differently throughout my efforts of the last year to try and be a female doing things in a phenomenal sport, I might not have been able to do them the way that I was. I’m fortunate that it’s happening that way, but I think because that’s not — that has not been my focus and probably I can’t speak for them, but probably has not been the focus of other female drivers, say, Erica Enders, she’s just out there doing her thing knowing what she knows how to do. For me, that’s my mental capacity of just doing it. I think it’s an added benefit and I don’t think it has extra pressure. But I definitely get to see it when I’m at the ropes and see that, yeah, there’s a lot more little girls here than over down at, I don’t know, say, J.R.’s pit or something like that, and it’s for a reason, because we are doing great things. But I think that has just happened a little bit more natural than intentional for me.
Q. Do you think the females have a little bit of an advantage because they can watch the guys and pick up on some of their traits — they are not watching the females for traits, not any guy I’ve ever met, anyway. You know what I’m saying? You get the opportunity to say, that trait, maybe I can use a little bit of that, maybe not use so much of that, that kind of thing?
LEAH PRITCHETT: I guess if you’re really looking at it as a competitor when you’re watching, you don’t really have an option. You are going to look at the men in your sport because they are 90 percent men that you are competing against. I think I had a different situation. I was fortunate to be team members with Melanie Troxel, and she set some mile markers of her own in being successful in both Pro Mod and in Funny Car and in Top Fuel. So we got to go through together. So I did actually look to Melanie to teach me a number of things from a driving standpoint throughout Pro Mod and in Funny Car, and it wasn’t because she was a female. It was because she was my teammate and she was a really good racer. Yeah, you know, maybe the tides will turn at some point and maybe some drivers will look to us females to see how we’re doing it. But at the end of the day, obviously results speak volumes. And Brittany and I went to the final and we were the — yeah, we were two females in the final. There weren’t two males in the final and that’s for a reason. We had bad Hot Rods underneath of us, we both did our job all day long. And it could be anyone’s day on any weekend. But I wouldn’t sell ourselves short by any means because we’re female and guys aren’t looking to see what we’re doing. We do have a little bit, I’m sure, more to prove. Brittany and I, we have a lot more to prove on the racetrack to get to a point where maybe other racers are looking to us for what we’re doing, but there’s not a lot different. There’s not a lot of differences on really how you drive a car. You can’t watch somebody go down the track and go, I’m going to go do what they did. You can see what they did right or what they did wrong but at the end of the day, how you drive that race car in my opinion is what teams feels right to you and you can’t duplicate that no matter who you’re watching. That’s an all-natural thing and that’s a talent that is either accrued over time or it’s natural ability. And no matter how much you watch somebody, you can learn but you can’t replace time on the track.
Q. What would it mean to win at a track (Gainesville Raceway) with so much history?
LEAH PRITCHETT: It would be phenomenal. I would have to say it would supersede the Phoenix win. Obviously because it’s the race right after it, but in all fairness, it’s the largest race in my opinion on the entire circuit besides the U.S. Nationals. I think it kind of hits home for me a little bit, although I didn’t grow up on the East Coast and I was never able to attend a Gatornationals growing up, but I watched every single one since I could remember from TV and it reminded me of my home track, like Bakersfield, of being just very — not grudge-like in a way but it encompasses all of the heritage and just pure racing. Like the roots of our entire motorsport of NHRA drag racing is there from the actual track itself. I mean, Kenny Bernstein, setting 300-mile-an-hour records to the way the stands are set up to the people that are going there because they have been going there with their family and friends for so many years. Not that that’s too much different from the other racetracks. But it’s all encompassing of the roots of our sport and to be able to win there on a Sunday behind so many incredible legends that have done before is a really big notch that you would be able to have on your resume. It would be incredible. Honestly, in my situation, to do that, that would be two wins back-to-back and that’s that would be unheard of, especially for me. So it has a little bit more meaning there, too. I couldn’t ask for anything more, but that’s our focus obviously to win but our strategy is round by round.
Q. A lot of drivers consider Gatornationals one of the majors in the sport. Is that pretty obvious to you and others?
LEAH PRITCHETT: It is, absolutely. I think that is very homogenous among whether it be the drag racing community and fans or spectators to the competitors alike and I think because it really kicks off drag racing for the east coast. We have had our two events there and tested on the west coast now. Now it kind of makes everything come to the realization that this tour is finally hugely in swing Nationwide. And it doesn’t get any bigger and better than having Pro Stock start their season and I believe Pro Mods are going to be there. So anything race car or bike is there and everything — it’s coming together, the series is here. And absolutely, I think it’s because, like I said, it kicks off for the east coast because people — the East Coast has been waiting longer than the west coast to watch some racing, and I think that’s why it helps to be so big and constantly stay so big because it’s finally what everyone’s been waiting to see on the east coast.
Q. Do you feel more pressure because you’re a woman to win or do you feel more pressure because you’re a race car driver to win?
LEAH PRITCHETT: I can 150 percent say that it’s because I’m a racer to win. And the case in point being that final round at Phoenix. Barely even realizing that I’m going up against Brittany and in my mind it was just, okay, cool, I’m up against Brittany, finally not in the first round, and not a female to female standpoint. If anything, when I think about racing Brittany, or another female, I just think about them as a racer, not about their gender by any means. So yes, we are the most diverse but from a pressure standpoint, I have been in a lot of high-pressure situations in a lot of other categories in my life and they were all from a racer standpoint. Now it’s really not any different. If there was more extra pressure on it — I don’t know. It’s already there and I don’t think about it and I’m not sure that I ever will, and these might not be the right answers, I’m not really sure. But for me it’s just straight racing. And I had mentioned it before, because I’m around men all the time, and that’s just what I’m comfortable with and have known to grow into that, no, it’s really not — it’s a cool thing. I think it’s a wonderful, excellent by-product to be able to be a female and set these mile markers and stones and records for us. But the race car does not know any different, whether who is behind the wheel. But the path to get there, I would definitely say is different, and I think this that’s very important and that that is something to be looked at. But man, as a female, the pressure of that side of it, I think comes from outside the race car. It comes from a media standpoint and what people expect and maybe stereo types and things like that. But in my mind, they don’t exist.
Q. Can you talk a little bit about Mike Guger’s (co-crew chief) contribution to the team?
LEAH PRITCHETT: Absolutely. You mean besides making us laugh every single moment of every day? Oh, man, I first have to say, probably his perseverance and tenacity to win and to down right throw the gauntlet out every single time is very infectious. His will to win — I mean, everyone has a will to win. Nobody should ever show up to the racetrack without ever thinking they are going to at least be close to No. 1 or hold that Wally on Sunday. But he’s endured a lot of the same pressures I have. He went to six final round last year and wasn’t able to put that final win light on. His mechanical ability is unquestionable and his tuning ability from a motor standpoint, I think that’s what complements our crew chief so much is each other. Joe Barlam (crew chief) is pretty much king of clutches. That’s his gamut. So he understands the clutches like — the clutch, like nobody else. And Guger specializes in fuel system and motor and making power, so they complement each other. That’s what Mike Guger brings to the table, in addition to his leadership of the team, and being able to keep a great attitude no matter what. We’ve already had some really down lows and highs, and we’re only two races in. Being able to keep this chemistry that we have of our team is very natural. And overall what Mike Guger is bringing from-leadership standpoint and his tuning ability and his perseverance and tenacity is something that is going to be really hard to break and that’s what gives me a lot of confidence in our team is because the people at the top are very strong people, and that just gives strength to everybody else that he works with.
THE MODERATOR: Ron Capps won the season opening event in Pomona for his 45th Funny Car win and his 46th overall Mello Yello Drag Racing series victory and his lone one Top Fuel win coming in 1995. He has 45 career Funny Car wins, second in the category trailing John Force and he also raced to his second round appearance in Phoenix and he’s a three-time Gatornationals winner, including last season. How important is it or how good does it feel for you to get off the season on such a strong start?
RON CAPPS: It’s always awesome for a lot of reasons. We ended the season very, very well in Pomona and actually in the Countdown (to the Championship), we had a pretty darned good Countdown, all but one race went to the semifinals, so very consistent. Del (Worsham) and Jack (Beckman) just had a much better Countdown. And so end of the year, we just wanted to sort of take everything apart and put everything back together and worked on a few things and tune-up wise left it alone and sure enough we rolled out of Pomona No. 2 qualifier and ended up winning the race. We have a great hot rod now. He’s really got consistency in the clutch department, which is huge. I’ve got a lot of confidence now as a driver for sure.
THE MODERATOR: You talk about consistency. Has your team pretty much remained the same? Is it pretty much intact from the end of last year going into this year?
RON CAPPS: Yeah, we’ve been NAPA I believe eight years and pretty much had the same core of guys. We have one guy that left, actually decided to stay home and take care of his dad. So the guy that replaced him was somebody that had taken a break and gone home a couple years ago. So it worked great and he came back on and he was friends with the guys on my crew. It’s been pretty nice to every off-season to know you’ve got the same guys buckling you in, the same guys taking everything apart. That’s always nice as a race car driver to know that everything’s just kind of continuing on from the year before.
Q. What makes the Gatornationals a major?
RON CAPPS: Well, I grew up in California, going obviously with my dad to Lions and Bakersfield, Fremont, places like that. And all I had to read was Drag News and National Dragster and Hot Rod and all those magazines. As a kid growing up with a dad that raced on weekends, sort of the track champion on the central coast of California in Santa Maria, the big races to us were obviously Pomona. And then you read about Indianapolis which obviously was the biggest race but Gainesville was always the one you read about. It seemed so far away to a kid in California, just reading about the history of it, seeing the highlights with Darrell Gwynn and Big Daddy going at it. Those were some great moments. And so when I finally got to go as a Top Fuel driver, I felt like I was traveling across the world and then to win my first time in Funny Car, words doesn’t describe to be able to win a race that big. Yeah, all the drivers tell you, it’s the first race on the east coast, it’s sort of the winter nationals of the east coast. But what’s funny is, and I’ve raced there a lot, sometimes you kind of — I forget why it’s so big or how it’s so big, until that Friday when you’re driving in, and you pull up that main highway and start going up that road. And there’s just camper after camper on the right-hand side, and people that have been camped there all week, that travel all over the place — it hits you. It’s like, wow, it’s something you don’t see at all the races and it goes on for a mile-and-a-half, two miles. You know, it doesn’t take very much to remind you once you pull in those gates.
Q. You’ve won three of them, how special are those to you when you look back on your career?
RON CAPPS: They are all in their own way pretty special. Like I said, it was hard to believe we won it the first time when Ed McCulloch was my crew chief. I couldn’t imagine I was sitting in the winner’s circle with Ed ‘The Ace’ McCulloch and Don Schumacher after winning the Gatornationals. It was bizarre for me, and to win it again. And then last year, we started the weekend by blowing up on Friday and destroying our brand new body and the sort of mistake I made when the car got out of the groove, we were trying to qualify. I was mad at myself but to come back like we did on Sunday, and (Rahn, crew chief) Tobler gave me a great race car. There are just days you feel like you can’t be beat, and that was one of those days. Then you sort of realize at the end of the day when you take that turnoff, just won the Gatornationals again. They are all pretty special. And it’s usually not until the morning after you wake up and you realize it wasn’t a dream and you won the Gatornationals again.
Q. With the great TV coverage that NHRA gets, recently especially, fans get close to feeling what it’s like to go 300 miles an hour. Could you talk about what you actually do: What’s the most fun and what’s the most work?
RON CAPPS: Yeah, the TV thing, it’s going to get better and better, believe me. The cameras, the story line, they are working on different ways to show it to you to kind of bring the fans a little closer and show the actual speed of the cars. They had the camera guys on the grandstands last year — last race in Phoenix, and that was a great view. I loved seeing that because it really shows you what the fans see and hopefully they are going to do more stuff like that. But I don’t know about the hardest. What’s funny is having live TV is sort of something we’ve all wanted so bad as racers and owners and crew chiefs for our sport. Everything that we have started this year, it’s just such a long time coming. Listening to Leah, I remember my rookie year in ’95 when I won in Top Fuel, for several years after that, even when I started driving for Don ‘The Snake’ Prudhomme, those first few years of Funny Car, we used to fly in and do pre event press, maybe a couple weeks before Gainesville, we would fly into Orlando and NHRA would take us around. And we would be doing interviews with sports people, guys or girls, that were asking me how long our pit stops took or just questions that you almost — you had to sort of educate a lot and I felt like I was always on a soap box, and I was having to sell our sport and used to make me so mad and I’d get so aggravated. I’d leave there and say, why am I having to try to sell this sport. If somebody came the first time, you don’t have to sell them. They are coming back. Guaranteed, they are coming back. They are hooked. It just was weird to do that for a long time. Now it’s so neat to see what Peter Clifford, what everybody has done with NHRA. These first two races this year have been super exciting. Even to win the first race and have it be the 50th year of the Funny Car, there’s so much going on. Leah, winning her first race two, girls in the final round, a lot of cool stuff. It’s finally nice to see the sport where it should be.
Q. As far as when you’re in that car, what’s work to you?
RON CAPPS: In a Funny Car, I don’t know about the Top Fuel car now, but you don’t enjoy the run itself, unfortunately. You’re fighting for your life to do everything right and make the right quick decision. There’s six or seven or eight or nine or ten people on the line you, including the owner, standing behind the car that spent hours working on a car; you don’t want to mess up. The actual run, you’re just fighting for your life to keep this thing straight and not make a mistake that once the chutes come out, you sort of reflect for a second on how enjoyable it was. But during the run, there’s no enjoyment, man, it’s crazy. So I’d probably say once the chutes come out, that’s probably the easiest part. The hardest part is being strapped in the car and having somebody have an accident in front of you like Densham did in Pomona. That’s hard to be in the car and have that happen and hear your guys all run up to see what happened and come on the radio and tell you it was a bad accident. That’s probably the toughest thing as a driver.
Q. You had spoken about how your car was consistent at the end of last year. You come in very consistent beginning of this year. Does that give you a lot of confidence going into the long haul of the season that maybe this time, with the consistency being great out of the gates, that you can seal the deal and win a championship?
RON CAPPS: Yeah, like I just said a minute ago, we went to all by one of the races went to the semifinals. That’s pretty consistent and that will win you championships a lot of the time. The problem was we weren’t showing up and being No. 1 qualifier and taking all those points. We weren’t taking all those little qualifying points in every session. We weren’t setting the record. We were running good but we just weren’t running the big, big numbers like that and that’s a conscious thing that Ron and the guys worked on in the off-season. Look, Pomona, we were No. 2 qualifier, Phoenix, No. 1 qualifier and we stole a lot of those little points in qualifying that are extra bonus points. So that’s what we didn’t do in the last few years. And I’m confident already in the car and Tobler has already had just a very consistent car, which will win races a lot of time to force our opponents to make mistakes, knowing we are going to go down the track. But now he’s turned up the notch a little bit when he had to and I think that’s sort of been the difference. I really think during the Countdown, that’s when it’s going to count. You’re going to have to throw the big numbers like Dell and Jack did from time to time last year. Had we done that a couple times, we would be the champion. I think that was kind of the only missing thing we had as a team.
Q. Where does Rahn rank to you? You’ve had some great crew chiefs over the years.
RON CAPPS: We’ve won a lot of races. I’ve gotten to work with Roland Leong, Ed ‘The Ace’ McCulloch, the late Dale Armstrong, some pretty cool crew chiefs. And Tobler, we had a pretty good talk on Saturday night between our qualifying runs and first round and it was a little bit of a heated discussion between him and I where we disagreed on something. And it was the first time we sort of sat for about an hour and hashed something out, and it showed on Sunday that it was a good thing because I enjoy racing with him. I really enjoy racing with him on the racetrack and then away from the racetrack. There’s not a lot of people at the racetrack I would go spend, you know, dinner out with, and maybe go see a concert that are crew chiefs. But he’s one of those guys, that I really enjoy being around. So I’ve gotten to work with guys like Ed ‘The Ace’ McCulloch. He didn’t talk much. If he didn’t say anything to you, you did good. You didn’t ask questions. Roland, just such a unique guy. And Tobler, I think I’ve won more races with anybody as far as a crew chief than I’ve had in the past with him. He’s just a lot of fun to be around.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
