Ron Capps Motorsports Post-Race Recap: DENSO NHRA Sonoma Nationals

DENSO NHRA Sonoma Nationals
Event 11 of 20
Sonoma Raceway
Sonoma, Calif.
July 17 – 19, 2026

Ron Capps Maintains Funny Car Points Lead Despite Sonoma Early Exit

By: Ron Capps Motorsports (Photos Courtesy RCM)

SONOMA, Calif. (July 19, 2026) – Ron Capps and the NAPA Auto Care Funny Car team went into Sunday eliminations at the DENSO NHRA Sonoma Nationals with serious momentum. He entered the weekend as the most recent Funny Car winner on the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series tour after a historic double-up win with Top Fuel teammate Maddi Gordon. Capps stayed hot during qualifying, where he won his first Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge of the season. But the three-time world champion was upset in a titanic first-round matchup against the two-time and defending world champion, Austin Prock, resulting in just the third first-round exit of the season for Capps. Still, he leaves Sonoma Raceway with the Funny Car points lead.

Just two weeks removed from the first-ever Ron Capps Motorsports nitro double-up where Capps earned his 80th career win and Gordon scored her first career Top Fuel victory at Norwalk, Capps and crew chief Dean ‘Guido’ Antonelli kept their class-leading ways going when qualifying kicked off at Sonoma. Capps rocketed to the provisional No. 1 spot in the first qualifying session with his 3.900-second blast at 330.07 mph, earning three championship bonus points. He then drove into tire smoke in the second session and ended Friday in the No. 4 position.

Capps then rolled into Saturday’s two qualifying sessions, which also included the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge. Appearing in his 24th career Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, Capps met up with Alexis DeJoria in the first round for a rematch of the Norwalk semifinals. Capps came out on top in this edition as well, leading from start to finish with a winning 3.941 E.T. at 329.26 mph. It was also the second-quickest pass of the qualifying session, giving Capps another two bonus points. In the final round of the #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, Capps had to rely on his 30-plus years of experience to muscle the NAPA Auto Care machine to the finish line. He started to smoke the tires, but he pedaled the throttle and drove to a 4.429 E.T. at 225.03 mph to defeat the tire-smoking Jack Beckman. It was Capps’ fifth Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge win and his first of the year.

The first round of eliminations on Sunday morning brought a monster matchup between two of the most recent Funny Car world champions. Capps and opponent Austin Prock left the starting line separated by just thousandths of a second, and the two were evenly matched until Capps started to lose traction. He had no choice but to step off the throttle as Prock raced on to get the win.

“This is an important race for me because it’s a home track for Maddi and I,” Capps said. “We’re coming off the high of Norwalk. We had a great race car in qualifying, and obviously, winning the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge was fun and exciting. But that was a tough first-round matchup. I know Guido’s going to beat himself up up there in the crew chief lounge. I’m bummed out. I don’t feel like I was the best at driving. But we’ll learn from this. Guido’s fantastic at learning why. Not a lot of crew chiefs can do that, so you can almost say it won’t happen again, whatever did happen. We might have just been pushing it, but you have to push it when you’re running the Prock family.”

Though Sunday didn’t result in round wins, the Ron Capps Motorsports hospitality area was buzzing with energy all weekend. Capps, a San Luis Obispo native, hosted numerous local supporters like Russian River Brewing Company. NAPA Echlin, the premier professional engine management brand in the automotive aftermarket, also rode on board with Capps and Gordon throughout the event. With more than 100 years of experience, Echlin designs, engineers, manufactures, and distributes over 60,000 of the highest quality engine management products in some of the most advanced-technology categories.

“What a great weekend with our NAPA people,” Capps said. “We had NAPA Echlin on the car, and Heritage Landscape and Traditional Medicinal came out. We just had a lot of fun people hanging out with us. And Gary Scelzi (Capps’ former teammate and ‘legend of the race’) is here. What could be better than that.”

Capps will only need to wait a few days to seek redemption at the Muckleshoot Casino Resort NHRA Northwest Nationals, July 24-26, at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington. He earned his first career professional win there in 1995 while competing in Top Fuel and has since added Funny Car victories at the Seattle facility.

Qualified: No. 4 (3.900 E.T. at 330.07 MPH)

Elimination Round Results:
E1: 4.353 E.T. at 208.26 MPH defeated by Austin Prock 4.101 E.T. at 263.31 MPH

NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Funny Car Point Standings (Unofficial):

1	Ron Capps	852
2	Jordan Vandergriff	778
3	Jack Beckman	764
4	Matt Hagan	744
5	J.R. Todd	721
6	Chad Green	667
7	Alexis DeJoria	644
8	Austin Prock	597
9	Spencer Hyde	544
10	Dan Wilkerson	543

Maddi Gordon Focused on Seattle After Early Exit In Sonoma

After nabbing her first professional win for Carlyle Tools two weeks ago in Norwalk, Ohio, Top Fuel rookie Maddi Gordon was eager to add another piece of hardware to her NHRA trophy collection. Unfortunately, tire smoke thwarted her efforts in the opening round of competition today against one of her childhood heroes, Leah Pruett, at the DENSO NHRA Sonoma Nationals. 

Gordon started qualifying with a strong statement on Friday afternoon in front of packed grandstands at Sonoma Raceway. The California native made a blistering run of 3.751 seconds at 336.49 mph, the fourth-quickest of the session. An oil down prevented the Top Fuel category from completing the second qualifying opportunity on Friday night, which was a disappointment for Gordon, who had been looking forward to turning on the header flames in front of a hometown crowd. As qualifying continued on Saturday, Gordon faced Shawn Langdon in the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, a rematch of her semifinal round in Ohio. Her 12,000-horsepower machine ran into tire smoke early and Langdon got the win. The tire smoke continued in the final round of qualifying but Gordon’s Friday pass put her in the top half of the ladder for eliminations. 

Starting race day from the No. 6 spot, Gordon faced Pruett in NHRA’s “Marquee Matchup” under the Sonoma sun. 77% of fans participating in the popular game Drag Race Bracket Bonanza selected Gordon to win the first-round pairing. Gordon got the starting line advantage but hazed the tires before the halfway point, ceding the win to Pruett. 

“The sport of drag racing should be called the sport of humbling,” remarked Gordon. “It has a way of humbling everyone. In drag racing, you’re going to lose a lot more than you’re going to win. That’s what makes winning so special. That Norwalk win was huge, but now we’ve got to keep looking forward. Unfortunately, that first-round loss was very tough. We struggled a little bit in qualifying. We were trying out some new things, but it didn’t work out the way we were hoping. Definitely pretty bummed, especially racing Leah. She was right in front of us in the points. So that stung a little bit extra. But the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror, so we’re just going to keep looking forward. Seattle is a beautiful place. It’s been really good to my family in the past, so we’re rolling in with good momentum there, and we’ll just try to do better.”

Gordon and the rest of the Ron Capps Motorsports organization will set their sights on next week’s competition as the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series heads to Seattle for the Muckleshoot Casino Resort NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways, July 24-26. 

Qualified: No. 6 (3.751 E.T. at 336.49 MPH)

Elimination Round Results:
E1: 172.54 E.T. at 4.876 MPH defeated by Leah Pruett 3.744 E.T. at 323.27 MPH

NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Top Fuel Point Standings (Unofficial):

1	Shawn Langdon	1069
2	Doug Kalitta	984
3	Leah Pruett	803
4	Antron Brown	680
5	Maddi Gordon	648
5	Tony Stewart	648
7	Josh Hart	592
8	Billy Torrence	559
9	Justin Ashley	484
10	Clay Millican	455