It could have very well been the most cringe-worthy moment of Ron Capps’ relatively young career as a team owner, and he wasn’t even in the room when it happened.
Three months after announcing Maddi Gordon as the driver of his new Top Fuel dragster, Capps learned what had unfolded during an NHRA Sonoma Nationals press conference. A reporter had asked his longtime mentor, Don Prudhomme, whether he saw qualities in Gordon that reminded him of the young driver he had helped shape into a champion.
Anyone familiar with Prudhomme knew there was no rehearsed answer coming.
“I don’t know. Would I have picked a little girl to drive my race car? I don’t think so. I mean, that’s just my opinion. I’m not from that school…,”
Prudhomme said before explaining how the sport and its opportunities have changed since his heyday.
Capps didn’t take the comment personally because he understood who was delivering it. Prudhomme has spent a lifetime saying exactly what’s on his mind, whether people agreed with him or not.
Still, it wasn’t the kind of headline a first-year Top Fuel driver needed before she’d had the opportunity to establish herself.
If that conversation made Capps uncomfortable, what happened next bothered him even more.
When Gordon reached the semifinals in her professional debut at Gainesville, the conversation surrounding her changed almost overnight. She wasn’t just the promising rookie from a championship-winning Top Alcohol Funny Car team anymore.
By March, CompetitionPlus.com and other media outlets were already identifying Gordon as the next face of drag racing. The headlines multiplied. Television cameras kept finding her, and fans did, too. The attention made perfect sense to everyone. Capps saw something different. He’d seen this movie before in that he believed the expectations were arriving much faster than the experience.
He appreciated the excitement but wanted her to earn it first.
“Well, all the nicknames I felt, I’m sure that a lot of people in our company and Maddi included, thought T-shirts were coming right away, Maddi, The Baddie, and all the other ones that came up,” Capps said. “But I said no.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t want a Shawn Langdon or an Antron or somebody brand new like that. And the pressure that would have been on her to put a shirt out with a nickname… She went to semis the first race. Whoopie, right? I mean, some luck, this happened, that happened. I didn’t want to put that undue pressure on her either and I’m not even sure when we’re going to do it.”
So Capps pumped the brakes. There wouldn’t be any nickname merchandise or a marketing campaign built around her personality. He wasn’t interested in rushing what he believed should happen naturally. He’d watched this sport long enough to know what happens when expectations outrun accomplishments.
He wanted Gordon to become known for driving a Top Fuel dragster before becoming one of the sport’s biggest personalities. That wasn’t based on wishful thinking.
Long before Gordon climbed into one of his race cars, Capps had watched three generations of her family chase drag racing dreams. He knew her grandfather, and watched Doug Gordon mature from a kid running around Division 7 races into a three-time Top Alcohol Funny Car world champion, and later watched Maddi grow up around the same pit area.
When he finally offered her a Top Fuel opportunity, he wasn’t gambling on potential.
“I just saw a lot of myself and strangely I saw a lot of Blaine Johnson in her and just the way her mannerisms, the way she worked on the car,” Capps said. “Just the mechanical part. Blaine obviously would be a multi, multi world champion had he been alive and I always felt like we had a lot in common when we were growing up.”
Those impressions weren’t formed overnight. Capps’ observations of the kid and her family stretched far beyond the race car.
“It goes back to when I was a crew guy working around Blaine and Allen, and Jim Rizzoli and Division 7 alcohol dragsters,” Capps said. “Her grandfather raced Funny Cars and I got to be around him quite a bit and I just thought he was salt of the earth. Just a great, really good guy.
“And then her dad at that time was younger than me and we were two snot-nosed kids running around the track. So to watch him grow up, take over the business and then get his license when her grandpa got out of the car. And then watch Maddi grow up in Junior Dragsters. I just followed along from afar and we would see each other.”
By the time Gordon reached Gainesville, Capps already believed she belonged in Top Fuel.
What surprised him wasn’t how quickly she adapted to the race car.
It was how quickly the sport tried to crown her before she had the chance to prove him right.
Norwalk didn’t change Capps’ opinion. Instead, it changed everyone else’s.
Every race seemed to add another lesson to Maddi Gordon’s education, it became another reminder that talent alone doesn’t make a Top Fuel driver. That’s why, when people asked him about Norwalk afterward, Capps rarely started with the final round.
The real story in Capps’ eyes was Gordon’s semi-final race against the points leader Langdon looked ordinary enough. Both dragsters lost traction, Gordon recovered first and advanced to her first Top Fuel final.
Capps saw the part most people missed.
She trusted her foot before she trusted her thoughts.
Months earlier, Gordon climbed out of her dragster after losing traction against Leah Pruett convinced she’d made the wrong decision. She replayed the run in her head, wondering if she’d waited too long to pedal the throttle.
Capps saw it as an opportunity to help her grow confidence.
“She was really down herself when we had the instance with Leah,” Capps said. “We had a long talk after that and I just said, ‘It’s just going to happen.’”
He explained to her what every experienced nitro driver eventually learns.
“I explained to her how it’s happened to me before where your foot just does it and you’re a natural,” Capps said. “Your foot will do it and you’re going to be about 300 feet under power and you’re going to go, ‘Holy crap, I just pedaled it.’”
“That’s literally… Isn’t that what happened?” Capps asked afterward.
“Literally, exactly what happened,” Gordon replied.
Ironically, Capps never witnessed the run himself. He was already strapped into his Funny Car waiting to race when someone leaned into the cockpit with the news Gordon had gathered the car up and driven away.
“I was in my car strapped in already and we heard she won,” Capps said. “Guido came back and said, ‘Dude, she caught that so quick.’ So I really was proud.”
Then the afternoon turned into something nobody could have scripted.
Gordon outran four-time world champion Antron Brown for her first Top Fuel victory. Minutes earlier, Capps earned the 80th Funny Car victory of his career. Doug Gordon added a Top Alcohol Funny Car victory, giving the Gordon family a winner’s circle few families ever experience.
Yet the funniest story Gordon told afterward had nothing to do with winning.
She admitted the low point of her day came hours before eliminations when she realized she’d missed driver introductions while filming promotional videos with Capps for upcoming races.
“So this morning was actually pretty low,” Gordon said. “I’ve never in my life ever seen any pro driver miss driver intros.”
When someone reminded her Shawn Langdon had done the same thing, her mood instantly changed.
“Oh, okay,” she laughed. “I feel a little better.”
That was the point Capps had been trying to make for months.
She had walked into the media center carrying a Diamond Wally and somehow turned the conversation into a comedy routine. After Bill Bader placed the traditional winner’s medallion around her neck, Gordon smiled and looked at him.
“Bill, I feel like I’m getting married.”
“He said, ‘I do,’” Gordon laughed.
A few minutes later she had everyone wondering how airport security was going to react when she tried carrying the Diamond Wally onto the plane.
“I can’t wait to take this thing through security and see what they got to say about it.”
It was anything but a rehearsed statement. It was Gordon being Gordon, not trying to become drag racing’s next star. She sounded exactly like the young woman Capps had watched grow up around the sport, the one he believed would eventually earn the attention instead of chasing it.
Not only could she handle the pressure Capps feared, but her trophy proved Gordon could win a Top Fuel race. Her reaction afterward explained why fans were already lining up outside her trailer long before Norwalk.
“My family being here means so much; they’re what got me here,” Gordon said. “They taught me everything I know, and without them believing in me when I was driving the Alcohol Funny Car, I would’ve never gotten this opportunity.”
Then Gordon said something that explained why Capps never stopped believing in her.
“Because I blew some stuff up in that car. I made mistakes, I cost us money, I cost us more work in the shop, and I ate myself up over it, but they stuck with me and stuck by my side and believed in me and Ron Capps has done the same thing. I’m just so grateful; this truly is the best day of my life.”
