It’s safe to say, team owner/nitro Funny Car driver Ron Capps will not forget June 28, 2026, anytime soon.
That day – which was Sunday – Ron Capps Motorsports swept the Top Fuel and nitro Funny Car titles at a national event as Maddi Gordon and Capps won those respective classes at the 20th annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals.
Capps did his part in his NAPA Auto Care Funny Car clocking a 3.969-elapsed time at 328.54 mph to edge Jack Beckman’s 4.011-second effort at 323.43 mph in the finals at Summit Motorsports Park.
Then, he put on his team owner hat and watched his rookie Top Fuel driver Maddi Gordon oust Antron Brown in the finals to set off the RCM celebration.
“You lay in bed and you dream about stuff like this, right? I mean, she [Maddi has] laid in bed and dreamt about things that you’d never think you would achieve,” Capps said. “That was me when Snake [Don Prudhomme] hired me. I thought, I don’t know, I was driving for Roger Primm, and didn’t have a sponsor. Never in a million years did I think I’d even get a license in a Top Fuel car. And people saw something in me. Then for Don Prudhomme to call, and I still didn’t understand what he saw. He had a proven driver, Larry Dixon, already there. He sent him to school to learn how to talk on TV and media training and all that. And he never did that with me, and I thought, that’s sort of weird. And I wasn’t so great in the first few interviews, but he wanted me to just be myself.
“So, I felt the same way about Maddi. 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, the way she … there was just the mechanical part. Blaine obviously would be a multi-world champion had he been alive. I always felt like we had a lot in common when we were growing up, and I just saw that in her family. But, you know, it goes back to when I was a crew guy working around Blaine and Alan [Johnson] and Jim Rizzoli and Division 7.
“I knew right off the bat that [Maddi] was going to be great. I didn’t anticipate the fanfare as much and as quickly as it was. She lost the semis that first race in Gainesville, and Joe Sabo from Carlyle, we walked outside, it was raining. She was knocked out of the competition, and there were 20 people deep in her trailer.
And I was like, ‘Whew.’ And I walked out, and I thought, this is going to be pretty cool. And she just lived up to it. I went over to the staging lanes, and I wasn’t sure I was going to go. I went to check to see if Beckman was in the car, and then I saw her standing there, she’s like, ‘Yeah.’ And she’s just smiling at me, that Maddi Gordon smile, and I asked her for advice. Do you have any advice for me? I don’t know how many final rounds I’ve been in, but it was fun. It was fun to have that little interaction, and then just hope that it came out right.”
It did as Maddi’s father, Doug Gordon, won the Top Alcohol Funny Car class in Norwalk, followed by Capps and then Maddi edged Antron Brown for the Top Fuel title.
“Once we got the win, I thought the odds were definitely going down with her dad and me getting the win,” Capps said. “But crazy, crazy, we’re just lucky, man. We got great people around us.”
This was Capps third national event win this season as he took top honors at the FMP Arizona Nationals on March 22 in Phoenix and the 4-Wide Nationals in Charlotte, N.C. (April 26).
This was Capps 80th career Wally – 79 in Funny Car – and one in Top Fuel in Seattle in 1995, and his second career Norwalk title as he also won the crown at the track in 2016 while driving for Don Schumacher Racing. Capps also has been a runner-up in Norwalk in 2011, 2013-2014, and 2024.
“There’s a lot of Schumacher everywhere. I told Antron down there that I’m not sure this would even be happening without him. He was a huge help for me when I decided to go on my own,” Capps said. “He had just done it right ahead of me. So, I mean, the smallest of things and the largest of things that you don’t think about, starting a business or a race team and things like that, he was a huge, huge help to me. We call each other brothers from another mother. I’m so grateful for what he’s done. So, it was cool.
“Beckman, obviously, longtime teammate, good friend, and then Antron. So, yeah, that was pretty cool to have the final four and have us four in that setup.”
Capps also stays atop the points standings – thanks to his three wins, one runner-up finish, and two No. 1 qualifiers. He has 812 points, followed by Matt Hagan (691), J.R. Todd (689), Beckman (684), and Jordan Vandergriff (651).
Capps is trying to win his fourth nitro Funny Car NHRA championship to join the ones he captured in 2016, 2021, and 2022.
A year ago, Capps only had one win in Bristol, Tenn., and he finished fourth in the standings.
On Sunday, Capps and Gordon both missed the driver intros because they were shooting a video for the fans and fortunately, and obviously, it didn’t impact their results.
Capps’ victory parade consisted of wins over Bobby Bode, J.R. Todd, Alexis DeJoria, and then Beckman. Capps qualified No. 3 at 3.891 seconds at 326.63 mph.
“This morning I was all flustered, and I was very flustered getting in the car. And then we had our first-round debacle going on, where I thought we weren’t going to make the run,” Capps said. “I’m just sitting there like, ‘Can anything else happen right now?’ I mean, it just seemed like the car just stacked against us. But then we got Chuck. Chuck Grospitch. You know, like that knight in shining armor that comes in and saves the day. That’s our car chief. And he thought of some off-the-wall, as he said, hood rat stuff. He pulled a part off the car that was more, we didn’t need it, but it’s nice to have. And he made it work. Now, obviously, I’ve had bigger lows in my career.
“But it’s moments like that when you persevere and you come back and you do better. And it makes you a stronger driver. And anybody out there who, you know, is having a bad day or wondering, ‘Can I do it? If you think you can’t do it, then you absolutely cannot. If you think you can, then you can. But it’s also about the people that you have around you. When I drove my family’s car, I had my family who picked me up when I was down and reminded me that I wasn’t that bad of a driver. It’s all about who you’re surrounding yourself with.”
Capps took a big chance on a pretty unknown driver in Maddi Gordon and now his move looks great, which is now a running joke.
“We have an inside joke, because I’m now a genius. And the same people that questioned me last year, of me putting a 21-year-old little blonde girl in a Top Fuel car that had never driven one, question to my face, I got the phone calls from them just saying, ‘You are the … great move. You’re a genius.’ So we always joke when she can hear when somebody walks up and goes, ‘You’re a genius.’”
And, now he can check the box that he is a team owner with a nitro Funny Car and Top Fuel win at an NHRA national event.
