FUNNY CAR

Flame-throwing, ground-shaking action abounded in the final FC qualifying session; Here, Jim Head’s Banshie Studios Stratus runs 5.05/306 against Gary Densham’s 4.86/312 in the Racebricks Monte Carlo.

"I wanted to hurry up and stage the cars. We were rolling up there and the longer we waited, I thought, ‘Oh, God, this is just adding to the pressure.’ I knew Zippy (Scelzi's crew chief Mike Neff) and Ace (Capps' crew chief Ed McCulloch) are real tight, they talk a lot. And the cool thing is that they know what each other is doing. They're real honest with each other, but they run the cars different. They're not identical cookie-cutter tune-ups and so one guy knows what the other guy is doing." — Ron Capps after scoring his third win this season be defeating teammate Gary Scelzi in the final round

"Rolling up there for the final, I said, ‘This is going to be a real good race or we're both going to smoke the tires,’ because they had every knob twisted and I thought, ‘Oh boy, here we go.’ And Ace told me, he said, ‘Look, if the car smokes the tires, I swear to God we're not diving, I'm getting after it, so don't even think about it.’ And I knew Zippy was doing the same. I still can't believe it. And I'm glad I could see out the side. I didn't know it was that close." — Capps again on winning by .010 seconds

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“Evidently he (crew chief Mike Neff) made his mind up before we left the pit area. He was opening everything up, putting everything on it, doing everything he could. He made one adjustment up here (at the starting line) about four cars back. And when Cruz (Pedregon) went out and ran that 4.76 and Capps went 4.75 and Force went .76 I kept waiting for him to get back to the box and turn the computer on and change the timing map. Never happened. I thought, ‘Uh oh, this thing is either going to fly or it's going to smoke the tires.’ When it made it past 60 feet I said, ‘Here we go!’ It was a serious run, a real serious run." — Gary Scelzi on the track record 4.746-seconds pass he made to pace the quickest nitro Funny Car field in NHRA history

“This starting line is exceptional. The whole race track is really good. Not a lot of cars are smoking the tires so, realistically, the move we made tonight is going to help us tomorrow, even though these conditions are great, and unlike tomorrow, this race track will take a lot more than we've been giving it early.”— Scelzi again, before NHRA re-prepped the track overnight, causing several racers to cry “Foul!”

“Everybody is trying to build power in this desert air and then for Ace to go up there and do everything right, like he did, made it so much fun." — Ron Capps on jumping up from 13th to 2nd on the list with his fourth and final qualifying pass

"We are here to qualify well and win races. When you're as close to the edge as we are, you can go over sometimes.”— Cruz Pedregon on qualifying 3rd just two weeks after DNQing at the previous race in Dallas, TX

"I'm disappointed to lose the number-one spot, but I was pretty sure that it wouldn't hold as late as we ran that final session." — Tommy Johnson Jr. on qualifying 4th after losing the top spot he’d held after Friday’s two sessions

"You look at the bump spot of 4.83 and you know it's serious hardball out here.” — Del Worsham after qualifying 12th with a 4.836 of his own

“By the time we ran, the bump was getting to the point where you needed a huge effort just to slide into the field. You couldn't pedal it, you couldn't drop a cylinder, and you couldn't let it get out of the groove. It had to be clean, fast, and straight. It was a tough mountain to climb, but we did it.” — Phil Burkart on breaking into 13th place with his final qualifying attempt