Veteran Funny Car driver Ron Capps came home to San Diego from the 2009 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series with the most victories this season: five wins in seven rounds of racing. He set the national Funny Car speed record as well, racing to 1,000 feet in 4.03 seconds. By anyone’s measure, Capps and his team had a banner year.

Carlsbad's Ron Capps drives Funny Cars.

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But Capps placed third in overall points in the NHRA countdown, and the disappointment in his voice is hard to ignore.

“To win the most races,” he says, “that’s huge. I’ve been runner-up for the championship several times now, and I’ve been close, been down to the last race at Pomona and had a chance at it lots of times.”

He calls third place a product of the recently implemented NHRA points system: “We weren’t the right car at the right time. It’s frustrating because every year I get a little bit older and I wonder if I’m ever going to have that ring on my finger.”

A Funny Car is anything but funny. The name is some kind of inside joke for a vehicle that can romp a quarter mile – that’s more than four football fields placed end-to-end -- in four seconds at a top end of 300 miles per hour, give or take.

“You have to ready for anything,” Capps says. “In the blink of an eye, the car could be 10 feet over on the left hand side of the track. You could be next to the wall with 9,000 horsepower at your toe, and you’re trying to keep this thing planted on the ground. It makes for an interesting four seconds.”

Funny Cars leave the starting line with the same force of a Space Shuttle launch, pushing close to 7 Gs. Just one of the eight cylinders in a Funny Car cranks out more horsepower than an entire NASCAR engine.

“With everything that’s going on your senses are so heightened – your smell, your vision – and on top of that you’re being thrown back in the seat. It’s something that you’ve definitely got to build up to,” says Capps. “It’s not something a person could just jump into. I’ve said before, I wish every person could go through the experience, but I’m sure it would stop a lot of people’s hearts.”

Capps is 44. With a career top speed of 331.61 mph set in Pomona in 2007, he is one of the fastest men on four wheels on the planet. Nearly a decade ago, he caught the eye of one of drag racing’s legends, Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, who made Capps a part of his team.

“I got to drive for one of the biggest legends in the sport, one of my biggest heroes, for nine years," says Capps. "The Snake moved me down to this area.” Capps and his family live in Carlsbad.

Known for getting behind the wheel at a more than a few NASCAR race tracks during the off-season, Capps says he will limit his extra-curricular driving activities to just one track this year: K1 Speed Indoor Go Kart Racing.

“I’ll show up and on any day you can see Tony Hawk, any of the extreme local athletes in there,” he says. “That’ll keep my chops up.”

What’s in store for 2010? Ron Capps would like to be wearing some new jewelry by this time next year. “I always try to look at the positive side,” he says. “At least my wife does. She says, Look at everything we’ve got, at everything you’ve done but guess what? I don’t have a championship ring on my finger. And that’s the ultimate goal.”