Antron Brown And Ron Capps Enjoying NHRA Team Ownership Together

Making it into the top tier of American motorsports is the dream of many drivers. The truth is, however, that like other professional sports making it to the top only happens for a select few. Becoming a pro driver takes a great deal of dedication, hard work, and a little bit of luck.

It’s tough. But it’s even tougher when you become a team owner, and you are the driver. These combinations are a rare breed in the pro ranks of American motorsports. Drivers who not only have to work on success on the track, but success with the team that puts them there.

In the NHRA two teams owned by drivers, Ron Capps, and Antron Brown, are officially less than three years old. But they have been years in the making and are, so far, on track to success.

Ron Capps is a three-time NHRA Top Fuel Funny Car champion. The California native grew up around the sport, helping his dad work on his race cars before graduating to become a crew member on a Top Alcohol dragster.

He moved to the driver’s seat of a Top Fuel dragster in 1995 on a team owned by Roger Primm. In his rookie year with the team, who only entered 14 races, Capps won his first NHRA national event title. That caught the attention of NHRA legend and Hall of Fame driver Don ‘The Snake’ Prudhomme who signed Capps to drive his Top Fuel Funny Car.

“I had never even sat in one,” Capps joked. “That was really being thrust into the rockstar sort of world of it; it wasn't just being hired by somebody else to drive…it's as deep as it gets. Right? Yeah. I mean, you're working for the sports legend. He had all the biggest sponsors.”

Capps would go on to race for Don Schumacher Racing starting in 2005 and would stay there until the end of the 2021 season when in a mic-drop moment, he announced shortly after winning his second NHRA title that he would leave Don Schumacher Racing for his own team starting in 2022.

And while it may have seemed a surprise to many, the truth is that Capps had already started putting the pieces together and the planning stages had been going on for quite some time.

“Don Prudhomme and then Don Schumacher are completely different types of owners,” he said. “I've always taken note and paid attention and always the ultimate goal was, the dream was, to be a team owner someday, to be the John Force or Connie Kalitta or Snake and all those guys.”

That dream began to become a reality as the world shut down due to the covid 19 pandemic.

“You know,” Capp said. “I was already in, 27 years of driving at that point, and opportunities had been there, just wasn't the right time.”

Antron Brown’s NHRA career started on two wheels. The New Jersey native was riding a motorcycle at age four shortly after the training wheels came off his bicycle. By the time he was 12 he was competing on 80-cc bikes in motocross and made his first runs on a dragstrip while a senior in high school.

While in college a phone call from NFL player Troy Vincent, who was married to one of Brown’s cousins, started his professional career in the NHRA. A year later Vincent and Brown formed Team 23 Racing.

Brown admits that his first tenure as a team owner wasn’t all smooth sailing. Vincent left the team leaving Brown as a co-owner with Mark Peyser. Brown said he wasn’t ready for team ownership.

“I was very young,” he said laughing. “I was like 23 years old. Then I did all that and managed it.”

The team acquired U.S. Army sponsorship in 2002 and raced under the umbrella of Don Schumacher Racing.

“We still had the team,” Brown explained. “But then he bought all the assets from the team and put a team together. And I raced for him underneath the US Army sponsorship, because that's where it went through.”

After a decade on two wheels, Brown made the transition to a Top Fuel dragster in 2008, winning his first event with David Powers Motorsports in just his fourth start. He would go on to amass a total of 74 event titles 16 in Pro Stock Motorcycle, 56 in Top Fuel, and three NHRA championships. He also rejoined Don Schumacher Racing near the end of the 2009 season after the powerhouse team bought the assets of the team Brown was racing for at the time. Brown became a teammate with Capps who had joined Schumacher in 2005.

“I learned so much from Don,” Brown said. “Sometimes if you don't have all the talent, you just need to outwork people. And that's what Don Schumacher was all about.

“I learned things over through there; I learned the pros and the cons of being a part of a big team, and the pros and cons of being part of a small team.”

Brown said he wanted to bridge the gap between a big team and a small team. And he wanted to do it on his own.

“I was up front with Don,” Brown said. “He tried to talk me out of it several times and I'm glad he stalled me for a little bit because then Covid hit, and it set us back a year.

“Literally the year after Covid was the year I was supposed to start my own race team. It wouldn't have been a good year to start a race team at all.”

The delay was a blessing in disguise for Brown. It gave him time to get his new team up, running, and ready to race. At least Brown hoped so.

“We still came in where we were just like saying prayers and we were like, ‘oh my God’. It was just to make the first race,” he said laughing. “I don't even care if we qualify, but we did actually. We qualified and we started performing and we got everything together with all the new stuff that we had because we literally started, not from scratch, but we did a complete rebuild.”

Don Schumacher, and covid also played roles in Capps decision to move to team ownership.

“There were a couple moments during Covid where I just said, ‘I've got to have more control over my destiny and my family’” Capps said. “I told Don Schumacher, my team owner going into the US Nationals that year, in ’21, that I was not coming back as his driver, and I was going to pursue being a team owner.”

During this tumultuous time for Ron Capps, and Antron Brown, another new team was coming into the NHRA. This new team was led by NASCAR legend Tony Stewart. Capps and Stewart have been friends for years, and Capps said Stewart helped him as well by ‘lending’ him a pivotal member of his new organization.

Kelly Antonelli is the wife of Capp’s crew chief Dean Antonelli. She has worked behind the scenes for some of the biggest teams in the sport such as John Force Racing for years.

“I was hoping to get her to come along to help me in my new venture,” Capps said. “Because I needed somebody like that.

“Tony Stewart, Antron, a lot of people were trying to hire her.”

Kelly Antonelli would land at Tony Stewart Racing’s new NHRA operation but thanks in part to their long friendship, Stewart allowed Antonelli to help Capps transition to team ownership.

“You got to remember, I didn't take business classes in school,” Capps said laughing. “I wish I would've, but I was thrust into this whole business side of things that I had no idea. And so I was trying to tread water and just learn everything at a very rapid pace.”

To NASCAR Hall of Fame driver, and three-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart, owning a race team is nothing new. In November 2000, Stewart formed Tony Stewart Racing (TSR), and since its inaugural season in 2001, TSR has earned 27 owner championships – 14 in USAC, nine in the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series and four in the All-Star Circuit of Champions TQ Midgets.

In 2008 he added NASCAR team owner to his resume joining with Gene Haas and forming Stewart-Haas Racing. For Stewart a critical part of being a successful team owner is not just having talented drivers and fast racecars.

“Having the right people in the right positions is absolutely one of the biggest keys,” Stewart said. “And that's not just for motorsports, that's for life. Surround yourself with good people. And don't micromanage. If you feel like you have to micromanage, you probably don't have the right people in place.”

Stewart and Capps helped each other as both made the transition to NHRA team ownership.

“Tony was very, very, very open with me on a lot of things,” Capps said. “And he conversely was asking a lot of questions on the drag race side, so I was helping them as well on things that I knew; you know, crew members and contracts and what people made, and just a lot of things that they had a lot of questions.

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“It’s been a great relationship with them, even though we compete against each other. It was just unique how things, there were so many balls up in the air with a lot of different people at that time.”

Brown too, understood the ‘surrounding yourself with good people’ part as well.

“Oh, absolutely,” Brown said. That was the whole gist of it for me, to have all the right people together. I was very, like, I want to say strategic in getting all the right people together.”

Brown said for him it’s all about getting people to be the best versions of themselves.

“On top of it, you got to deal with some people that could be all-star like technicians that could work on the racecar, could do this,” Brown said. “But then they show it with bad attitudes, and you have one bad attitude that messes up everything.

“I learned that the first season of racing where I have a couple unique individuals that were very talented, very good, and they were just burnt down on racing and their attitude when they showed up, just it wasn't the right attitude and it made it bad for the rest of the team.”

Brown learned how to understand when changes needed to be made:

“Some of them made a change on their own where they say, ‘you know, I just need to retire, or I need to quit, or I need to make a change and they did.”

“I learned really soon how to pinpoint and see when you have somebody going downhill like that,” Brown added. “You got to get that figured out quick or it could bring the whole team down and put you in a bad position where you could struggle mentally and emotionally on the race team because you got a couple guys bringing it down or girls.

“And that was the toughest deal for me was dealing with people like that and also where they weren't being the best version of themselves.”

Brown said it was hard for him to deal with that.

“Because you always want; I treat people how I want them to treat me, and you do everything in the world for them, but you don't always get that in return.”

Ron Capps Motorsports and AB Racing made their debuts at the start of the 2022 NHRA season. The Capps team won the NHRA Camping World Series Funny Car championship in its rookie season, and AB Motorsports finished as runner-up.

For Capps it was validation that forming his own team was the right thing to do.

“I don't know if anybody's ever done that,” Capps said. “That was another crazy, very unscripted. I mean, you couldn't even dream that. I mean, we hoped, of course, but you got to prepare for the worst. I've seen a lot of new teams come into our sport and a lot of trash talking that they're going to do this, they're going to do that, and they're out of business halfway through the year.”

At the end of the day, once all the bills are paid, and the employees are taken care of, the team owner becomes what started it all, a racer.

“When I put my helmet on and I sit in a race car, that's my office, that's my happy spot,” Brown said. “When I sit in there, I kind of say it goes to glider mode where that switch comes on and everything just shuts off. You know what I mean? It all shuts off and then I'm able to focus on what I need to do, you know, and that's where it comes down.

“That's my happy place where I can't think about nothing but what I'm doing.”

As for the future, team ownership could be part of the end game for both drivers. But not for a while, especially for Ron Capps who at 58 years old is far from done.

“You know, I always try to keep myself as young and in shape and ahead of the game as possible,” Capps said. “And John Force (who still races at age 74) is the perfect example for us in drag racing and really everywhere else.

“I certainly haven't thought about getting out the seat yet, but I definitely have been thinking a lot about adding cars and at the right time without making it a distraction and, and eventually stepping out and being a team owner because It's I want to be in the sport.

“The sport gave me; I got a house, I got kids, I got a great life. That was all because of NHRA drag racing and my involvement…it's brought me some great, great things and I certainly want to be around for a long time.”