Nothing says friendship, like helping a friend win a championship. 

Top Alcohol Funny Car standout Doug Gordon just won his second consecutive and third overall NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series world championship in the quarterfinal round of competition at the Texas NHRA FallNationals at Texas Motorplex. He went on to win the entire event, securing his sixth national event victory of the season.

Gordon pulled it all off, thanks largely in part to help from his friends. 

Gordon and Sean Bellemeur had been battling for the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series Top Alcohol Funny Car world championship all season until his quarterfinal win sealed the deal. Clinching the title was one thing, but he still had a race to win. 

Gordon’s semifinal round against Christine Foster was the definition of calamity. Foster’s car lifted into an almost vertical wheel stand, blowing the body off before returning its front tires to the track, where she skillfully piloted it to a complete stop. Meanwhile, in Gordon’s lane, his Beta Motorcycles / Morro Bay Cabinets hot rod suffered a broken crankshaft around the eighth-mile mark, resulting in a near-catastrophic explosion before it coasted through the finish line. 

The Gordon family crew only had 50 minutes to service the car, including replacing the engine and blower. Fortunately for them, the drag racing community showed up and showed out to get the job done. 

Sometimes, those friends can be described as the competition. Bellemeur and his crew, as well as a slew of other helpful folks, were at Gordon’s pit before he’d even returned, getting things prepared to make the engine swap and lend a hand in any direction. Yes, the same man who lost the world championship to Gordon just one day prior came over to help the world champion be prepared to win the event. 

“I was right about half-track, and all of a sudden, there was a gnarly vibration,” Gordon said. “I was waiting for Foster to go around me, but I didn’t realize that she’d had trouble in her own lane. So, luckily we got through the round, but the whole body was covered in oil, the motor was hurt really bad. It vibrated a bunch of bolts loose; it vibrated the blower off of it. We had a big mess on our hands. Bellemeur went up to Maddie (one of Gordon’s two daughters who serve as the primary members of his crew) and asked if we needed anything. She said all she knew was that we broke the crank. He simply said, ‘We’re on it.”

“By the time we got the car back to the pit, all of Bellemeur’s guys were there, as well as people from several other teams. We had two guys from Shields, a guy from Samsel’s team, a guy from Annie Whitely’s team, Matt Bynum from Alexis Dejoria’s team - everyone was just thrashing. They’ve already gone into our trailer, got a motor out from under the bench and had it out and ready to go in the car. It was amazing. We were just battling for the championship the night before, and the next day, this is going on. 

“They all came down to the starting line too. I was sitting in the car right before I went into the water box, and he gave me a big fist bump. I was like, ‘Oh yeah!’ Then, seeing everyone on the startling line, I just knew that I couldn’t let them down. All these people put in all this effort. It will definitely go down in history as probably our biggest win ever. It was just an amazing thing to go through.”

When reflecting on his most recent world championship, Gordon realizes he’s living a dream. Most drivers never get to experience one world championship, let alone three. Fewer drivers rely on their teenage daughters to make that dream come true, but that’s certainly been the case for Gordon. They’ve been a fully-family-operated race team since 2022, and it’s clearly a combination that works for them. However, this is Gordon’s last year behind the wheel of his Top Alcohol Funny Car. His daughter Maddie will begin piloting the machine in 2024. 

“We won the championship in 2020, and that one was kind of an asterisk championship because of Covid,” said Gordon. “It wasn’t a full season and all that stuff. In 2022, I really wanted to win the championship to let the girls and me experience a banquet and all of the celebration that usually comes with a world championship.

“But it was a lot of pressure and it was really stressful. We put so much pressure on ourselves to win it. And we accomplished it. So this year, knowing it was going to be my last year, it was like, ‘Hey. We’re just gonna have fun. I’m not going to be stressed about the championship. If we can win a championship, great. We’re going to try our hardest. But we’re not going to stress on it so much. We’re just going to just have fun.’ And that’s what we did. 

“It was still difficult. It’s so competitive, and every round was hard. But at the end of the day, as long as we were having fun, we were okay if we won and okay if we lost. I was going to be happy either way. We got a lot of luck, but we ran really well too. When we started the year, we just really performing well. We’ve tried to learn from our mistakes and race smart. We raced hard when we needed to but we didn’t push the limits when we didn’t have to. This year, we’ve won six out of eight national events we’ve been to so it’s working. I started the year out with 20 national event wins and I thought if I had a really dream season, I could get to 25 before I’m done. That was 26 this last weekend.”

Beyond it being Gordon’s last year in Top Alcohol Funny Car, there’s another very special and significant reason that the 2023 championship is so important to the Gordon family. 

“Last year, when we went to the banquet, my dad didn’t want to go. He went to the Lucas Oil portion with a frown on his face the whole time, and then, as soon as it was done, he was out of there. But then, the next week, he said he regretted that. He said if he gets another shot, he’s going to be more into it. I’m really looking forward to that.”

They aren’t done yet. Gordon knows he’s got three races left and he wants to finish strong, including securing the LODRS West Region Top Alcohol Funny Car Championship, which is still up for grabs. It’s a title they’ve claimed six times in the past, and the team is focused on making it lucky No. 7 before the final round in Pomona.