Ron Capps’s choice of a driver for his forthcoming Top Fuel driver was both a challenge to remain traditional and a plan to emulate a drag racing icon who gave him his first shot at racing a fuel Funny Car.
That is why when Capps decided to move forward with a second fuel team, he chose a paid driver and not one on a pay-to-play basis.
Capps selected Maddi Gordon, a sophomore Top Alcohol Funny Car racer, to follow the same pathway he did as a driver in the professional ranks. She’s not bringing a dime to get the seat, only her merits as a driver and brand ambassador.
“I looked at it as a challenge for us, for Ron Capps Motorsports,” Capps said.
For the record, Capps turned down multiple offers from racers willing to pay to play. It was just a rabbit hole that Capps wasn’t willing to venture down.
“I learned that Don Prudhomme, especially early in my career, on things that matter, being around the Penskes, and just watching the way things are set up,” Capps said. “It’s always been something important to me being around Don Prudhomme.
“Then you go fast-forward to Don Schumacher’s and the way that even the multi-car teams. Everybody, you just had to act like you were on the best team and dress that way because that’s what you felt like. I always feel like we’ve done a good job of that from the beginning and having the great partners and we just done it in the right way.”
Reportedly, Capps has a sponsor or sponsors lined up for Gordon, the names of which will be revealed later.
“Even though it was money that we could have had coming in, it just didn’t seem right, and I’ve always said to myself, if I ever had a chance to do it, I would try to do what Don Prudhomme did when he saw something in me,” Capps said. “Roger Primm and John Mitchell and those people gave me my chances.”
The No. 1 selling point for Gordon to Capps was her work ethic, talent, and personality. Even though there was a small serving size on her driving, watching her and her sister disassemble and assemble an engine in the midst of a race day was enough to confirm his intuitions this was the right choice for his expansion plans.
This scouting report didn’t come via email or text; it was gleaned from his own eyes.
“I grew up in the alcohol pits, the Top Alcohol Dragster and Funny Car. Division 7 there was nothing better than the late ’80s and the ’90s in Division 7. It was a national event, every divisional race. You go down the list of drivers. The Jay Payne’s, Austin’s, Blaine and Alan Johnson, who I got to work on their cars, and just incredible.
“I always go back to the alcohol pits when I want to. No matter what’s going on in my pit area, if I go down to Jay Payne’s, I know that I’m going to leave there with a smile on my face. If I go down and visit Rizzoli’s, who I grew up with and worked on his alcohol dragster. So it’s always meant a lot.”
There was something about this Gordon girl, at least in Capps’s eyes. His admiration of her grandfather, Mike Gordon, and her dad, Doug, confirmed the pedigree he was getting.
“It goes back to the first weekend that the two girls {Maddie and Macie] worked on the car and Maddie, her first weekend, I think she built the engine at a divisional race,” Capps recalled. We were somewhere back east, and I reposted a post from their grandmother where they went on to win it. I just remember sharing it because it was like they were so proud to have this probably 18 or 19-year-old at the time building the engine on it. She must’ve weighed 100 pounds at max, and she’s under there building the engine and doing the bottom end in between rounds. And then Sunday night to read that they won the race was like the coolest thing ever.”
Once a racer gets that embedded on Capps’ radar, it isn’t easy to get off it.
“I kept my eye on them. And, we would vacation every summer in Paso Robles between Denver and Sonoma since I’m from there, and we would be at this lake outside Paso Robles,” Capps said. “So I would see Doug, and I would see the two girls grow up because our kids are close ages. So it’s just been on my radar. Once I saw that she was going to get her license, it just ramped that up even more.
“It doesn’t take long when you’re around her to know she’s the real deal.”
It’s the art of the deal, and former teammates Capps and Larry Dixon Jr. had a great example in Prudhomme.
“Nobody had the deals we had,” Capps said. He took care of the people that worked for him, but he also understood how the team worked and how important it was to have a good driver and representative of those sponsors.”
That’s exactly what Prudhomme saw in Capps and what Capps saw in Gordon. That’s why Capps took a page from the Snake Playbook when he spoke to Doug Gordon, gauging his daughter’s interest in Top Fuel.
“I learned all that just watching him, but he was always like that,” Capps said. “It was cool to be hired and not expect to bring money. I didn’t have it anyway, but to get that phone call from just saying he was watching me was… I’ll never forget when Larry Dixon called and said, ‘Hey, Snake brought your name up again the other night at dinner.”
“I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me.”
“It’s the same thing Maddie said, ‘I can’t believe when Ron talked to my parents about me driving.”
Capps had asked Mr. Gordon for his permission to speak to his daughter about driving, and he left it up to the father to tell his daughter because he didn’t want to become a distraction for the rookie Top Alcohol Funny Car racer. She was so distracted that she went on to win her first race that weekend in Seattle, becoming the NHRA’s 100th female national event winner in just her first visit to the national event winners circle.
Gordon had the chance to warm up Capps’ Funny Car on Friday at the NHRA Vegas 4-Wide Nationals under his guidance, but that will likely be a much simpler lesson than instructing her to be less hands-on with the nitro team. He had to learn the same lesson when he started driving for Prudhomme. Just like Capps was beginning his next-level gig, Gordon had to learn that his personal services contract meant doing the non-dirty jobs of preparing the race car.
“It’s going to be different for sure,” she said. “I might just go over there and just wipe my hand on the bell housing to show I’ve been doing something. I’m just kidding.
“It’s going to be different for sure, and that was actually one of the first things Ron told me is, you’re not going to work on this car. You are going to pack your parachutes, maybe do the fuel, but you’re not going to work on this car. Being more around Ron in his pit, he’s so busy all the time.”
Maybe Capps noticed early on a key component in Gordon’s mannerisms that would fall out of line with what Prudhomme taught Capps.
“When I’m working on the alcohol car, I’m totally focused,” Gordon added. “I don’t like people talking to me while I’m working because I can’t do two things at once.”
And one of the Snake’s lessons of conducting yourself is be totally focused on the art of working the sponsors and the fans who spent their hard-earned dollars to come to the race.
Lesson by lesson, Capps is doing his best to bring her up in the Prudhomme’s school of coolness.
Capps might not admit it, but since he’s become a team owner when one sees him, they see the best of Prudhomme’s lessons.
“I can’t imagine that – it’s a big compliment because I emulate myself of what I learned from him every day. My wife even says to me, she goes, ‘You just did a Snakeism at home all the time.”
“I do little things that I learned from being around him, and he was, for a kid that was thrown into a rock star role, driving from the biggest name in the sport and the biggest sponsors, he was a father to me on the road for a lot of mostly off-the-track stuff.
“I’ve talked about how to dress, what shoes to buy, how to pack for a trip, a sponsor trip. Little things like that, just traveling, what to do and what not to do. I was sponsored by Miller Lite, and you drank Miller Lite whether you were drinking beer at a sponsored event or not, and you left the can sitting there, whether or not you drank out of or not. It’s just little things like that you never thought about that I learned, that I still do.”
And the biggest one of them is on display now. One does not pay to play; they play and get paid.
