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Force Triumphant, But Knows Capps Will Be Back11/28/2006By Bill Stephens, ESPN.com: Nearly 12 months to the day after John Force lost the NHRA POWERade crown, he won it back. And the scenario, although not identical to last year's, was certainly similar.
If you recall, Gary Scelzi, Ron Capps and Force were the three title front-runners heading into last year's AAA Finals at Pomona Raceway at the L.A. Fairplex. Scelzi took a slender points lead into the season's final day, and when he lost in Round 2, Capps and Force were both mathematically alive for the 2005 championship. In a stunning twist of fortune, both Capps and Force also lost in Round 2 just moments apart, and Scelzi escaped with his first title.
This year, Force's victory over Capps on that same quarter-mile in the same round on that same November weekend clinched an unprecedented 14th POWERade championship for the sport's winningest driver.
This season, Force and Capps dominated the championship stage right from the opening event in February, with Force's teammate Robert Hight making a late-season run that ultimately gave him an impressive second-place points finish. But over the 23-race schedule, Force and Capps bobbed and weaved for the points lead. Capps got off to a brilliant start with machinelike consistency, thanks to the skills of his friend and veteran tuner, Ed "Ace" McCulloch.
Capps, a Schumacher Racing stablemate of Scelzi and Whit Bazemore, advanced to five out of the first six final rounds of '06, winning three of them; over the first 11 races of the year, Capps held a 4-1 head-to-head advantage over Force. At the midway point of the campaign, Capps was sitting on a 106-point lead in the POWERade standings.
Meanwhile, Force was staying in the hunt with his steady, round-winning prowess rather than by accumulating national event wins. He scored only one victory in the season's first half, but suffered just a single first-round loss over that same stretch and would end the year with a total of four opening-round defeats total. |
