NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Being bashful is not a trait that’s ingrained in many NHRA crew chiefs so it shouldn’t be surprising that Rahn Tobler barely flinches when asked about his decision to change cars prior to yesterday’s fourth and final qualifying run. Tobler and driver Ron Capps were unhappy with the performance of their NAPA Dodge Hellcat, so they ordered the crew to prepare their back-up car, which had previously been raced in Pomona and Phoenix at the start of the season. Capps smoked the tires early on both of his previous ruins, so when he pulled to the starting line for Q4, he was ranked No. 17 out of 17 Funny Cars and was in real danger of suffering a rare DNQ. Capps responded with a solid 4.025 to land in the No. 9 spot, and Tobler walked off the starting line with a look best described as “there was never a doubt.”

“I actually read the wrong scoreboard and thought we ran 4.10 and I would have been perfectly fine with that,” said Tobler. “I didn’t find out that we ran 4.02 until I got back to the pits and I was tickled to death. That was the easiest tenth I’ve ever found. I would have been just as happy with a 4.10 to be honest. We made the change because the car just wasn’t working like we wanted it to. The last time we were in this situation, I didn’t make the change and we smoked the tires in Q4 and didn’t qualify. Then, we brought out the back-up car for testing and it went right down the track. I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.”

According to Capps, the car that he began qualifying with had a peculiar feel to it, even when towing it through the pits.

“It’s hard to explain but the car just seemed like it was steering a little funny,” Capps said. “My crew guy who sits in the car when we tow it up to the starting line noticed it in Q1 and said something, so I jumped in for the next run. When we looked back, this car blew the tires off at the hit in the semi’s in Houston and then it did the same thing here and that’s just not Rahn Tobler. He rarely, if ever does that. This car was scheduled to be front-halved after Atlanta so we just replaced it a little early.”

On a broader scale, the pairing of Capps and Tobler has cemented Hall of Fame credentials for both driver and crew chief. Without much debate, NHRA’s Mount Rushmore of driver/crew chief combinations features Force and Coil, Bernstein and Armstrong, and Amato and Richards, and one could easily argue that Capps and Tobler deserve consideration after 28 national event wins together and the 2016 Mello Yello Funny Car title.

“He has definitely become like an older brother to me,” said Capps. “We just communicate so well. He instinctively knows what he wants to do, and he relays that information so well. I can be strapped in the car three pairs back and he radios back to the crew and tells him what adjustments to make. I just get a lot of comfort in knowing that he’s on top of things.”

For the last quarter century, Capps has been one of NHRA’s most consistent and successful pros, and he’s been fortunate to work with some of the best crew chiefs in the business including Hall of Famers Roland Leong, Ed “the Ace” McCulloch, and Richards,  but he was not able to get over the hump and become an NHRA Mello Yello champion until Tobler took over the reigns of the NAPA Dodge early in the 2012 season. Capps admits that he has a hard time imagining racing without Tobler.

“He’s talked about a three-year plan to retire but I don’t know about that,” Capps said. “I’d love to someday go back to Top Fuel before my career is over and I’d absolutely want to have him with me. It’s like the Godfather -- I want to tell him that he’s in this deal for life.”

Tobler maintains that he’s on track for retirement in three years, but agrees that at this point in his career, he couldn’t see himself working with anyone other than Capps.

“We’ve won 28 races together in seven years and for most crew chiefs, that’s a career, and a very good one,” said Tobler. “He’s a veteran guy, and we are able to communicate well, and he’s there for the team when we need him. I am still a dragster guy at heart, but we’ve got two years left on our NAPA contract and I think they’re very happy with a Funny Car. We have three more opportunities to win another championship and that’s our goal.”

Capps struggled a bit out of the gate in 2019, and even though he came into the Charlotte event ranked seventh in the standings, he doesn’t feel like he’s far off the pace set by the class leaders. In qualifying, Capps has certainly been solid. He’s been the No. 2 qualifier in both Las Vegas and Houston and has been ranked no worse than ninth at any race this season.

“We just had too much clutch there,” said Capps. “We’ve been running the five-disc clutch for a year now and I think Tobler has a pretty good handle on it. He tells me what he thinks the car is going to run and most times he’s right on the number. We might have gotten a little behind this year because we decided not to test before going to Pomona. That four days or learning can add up to a lot. That’s our fault but it’s a long season and Tobler felt comfortable with what we had. We also just started to run the Hellcat body this year so that was another variable that we had to deal with. All things considered I think we’re in a pretty good spot.”