Smoke on the Water : Tim Capaldi Satisfies Penchant for Speed as a World Champion Drag Boat Racer

As he waited for another race, world champion drag boat racer Tim Capaldi stood on a grassy knoll and looked around. A thousand yards in front of him, a massive earthen dam towered over a man-made lake that was a half-mile long. Every few minutes, sleek boats skimmed across liquid quarter-miles like water bugs. Behind him on the steeps of a huge natural amphitheater, thousands of bronzed spectators were enjoying the California Outdoor Experience of sun, fun and sports.

“It’s all so perfect,” Capaldi said, a childlike fascination in his voice.

Capaldi, a 25-year-old Chatsworth bachelor, was taking in the scene at lower Castaic Lake last Sunday during the finals of the Bill Todd Memorial. His 18-foot blown-alcohol hydroplane, Shot in the Dark, was among 197 boats competing in 16 classes. Drag boats are the hot rods of water sports. The sanctioning body for this event is the International Hot Boat Assn., which holds a series of 10 events, culminating Nov. 11-13 with the World Finals in Phoenix.

Capaldi stared toward the shimmering lake, his attention sparked by the sound of engines blasting to maximum r.p.m.’s. A pair of top-fuel eliminators were getting ready to drag, their helmeted drivers strapped into seats at midship. The noise increased, sounding like a blown speaker at a Motley Crue concert. Side by side, the boats boiled the water at 200 m.p.h. The race was over in less than 5.40 seconds, the PA announcer informed the crowd, then added: “In response to a lot of questions, there is drinkable water in the restrooms. Out of the faucets. Read my lips.”

Capaldi turned and went back to his boat, which was on a trailer under a yellow canvas canopy. Like Bedouins, the racers and their crews had pitched tents and raised their colors on the flat sections of hills, about one-third of the way up from the lake. Cyclists on mountain bikes competed for right of way with boats that were being towed to and from the lake. Bare-chested young men and young girls in bikinis strolled by to admire the boats or stand in line at a 40-foot inflated replica of a Miller beer bottle.

Canopies protected the crews from the sun. All over the pit area, men were working on engines with tools stored in large metal bins. Compressors whined, mixing with “Rock Around the Clock” on the PA system. Drag boats are as temperamental and high-strung as thoroughbreds. In the top-fuel class, blown engines are not only common but expected. All boats take their share of punishment.

“We torched the head Saturday,” Capaldi said, referring to damage that occurred in the preliminaries. On Saturday night, Capaldi and his father, Ray, spent 3 1/2 hours rebuilding the engine in Shot in the Dark, finishing at 2 a.m. Sunday. “We were taking our time,” he said. “We could have done it in 45 minutes.”

According to his father, Tim Capaldi has been wielding a wicked wrench from the time he was age 3. That was in the late ‘50s when Ray was drag-racing cars. Ray, now a youthful-looking 51, wanted to be a father who involved his family in everything he did. So Tim and his younger sister Teri worked on the cars as well as a ski boat. The family “hopped the motors,” learning by trial and error, Ray said.

Their hopped-up Stevens ski boat won so many impromptu drag races at Pine Flats Lake near Fresno that a friend told Ray to get into legitimate racing. He tried it in 1969 and “got hooked.” In 1970, when Tim was 7, Ray bought a new Hondo flat-bottom boat. Immediately, the family tinkered with the design. They changed the hull and “picked up 10 miles an hour,” Ray said.

While Ray was establishing IHBA speed records and winning championships, Tim was learning--everything. As a child, he would shave model boats out of wood and sell them to youngsters at races. Between races, he would pull his little boat through the water, imagining himself at the helm of a 2,000-horsepower monster. He watched his father, he watched other drivers, he saw himself shooting across the lake.

“Nobody on this course today has made as many runs in their mind as I have,” Capaldi said.

Before he was out of high school, Capaldi had absorbed a lifetime of information about racing, mechanics and design. But he wanted to be a doctor. Capaldi, an all-league baseball player with a .457 batting average in his senior year at Faith Baptist High, went to the University of Southern California for a year to study premed. Then he turned 18, and his father finally allowed him to race a drag boat.

Goodby, Doc. “As soon as I started racing, I knew what I wanted to do with my life,” Capaldi said. “Once I got in that seat, there was no stopping me.” Indeed, he became the sport’s whiz kid, setting a course record in a blown-gas hydro his first year and a world record the next year in the same class. His top time is 195.22 m.p.h, seven miles faster than his father’s best.

“In our sport,” Ray said, “we’re the equivalent of Mario and Michael Andretti.”

Capaldi quit USC after his freshman year and went to work running heavy machinery in the family’s Canoga Park grading business. He works 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week and spends his spare time in the boat business. Aside from winning world and national titles, Capaldi has become a successful boat maker. At the Castaic races, about 15 boats were built by his C & H Hydros company in Canoga Park. He’s sold about 40 nationwide.

One of them, a blown-gas hydro named Distant Thunder, is driven by his father. Ray Capaldi is still hooked on racing. And still doing well. Last year, he was national runner-up to Tim in the blown-alcohol hydro class. Father and son have raced against each other five times. The situation isn’t comfortable for anyone in the family, even though Ray insists he doesn’t have a rivalry with Tim.

“I set records and he broke them,” Ray said. “Who better to do that than your own son?” According to racing people, Ray is a “hard runner,” but he loses the edge when he races Tim. “I can’t have the killer instinct against my son,” he said.

Tim has won all five races against his father, but there won’t be another rematch. “We refuse to race each other anymore,” he said. “If one of us got hurt, the guilt would be on the other person.”

Drag boat racing is a dangerous sport; two years ago, seven drivers died in the top-fuel class. But the specter of death isn’t what bothered Jo Capaldi when she watched her husband race against her son.

“I worried about father and son competing against each other,” said Jo, Ray’s wife of 27 years. “The father had to prove to the son he’s still good and the son tried to prove to the father he’s better.”

To avoid the possibility of a head-to-head confrontation at Castaic, the Capaldis competed in different classes over the weekend. Both were eliminated in the semifinals Sunday. Tim was leading in his heat when the engine blew. Afterward, the Capaldis set their sights on the IHBA event June 11-12 at Puddingstone Lake in San Dimas. There would be other days. All of them no doubt perfect.