A star is born - Maddi Gordon takes Gainesville by storm in debut weekend

A NAPA-branded golf cart was coming back down the return road toward the starting line when the grandstands began to notice who was riding in the passenger seat.

The cheers and applause from a packed Gainesville Raceway crowd grew louder the further the cart traveled. A volume loud enough to be heard through the microphones and over the public address system. And taking in the attention, pumping her arms in recognition of the response being bestowed upon her, was NHRA Top Fuel rookie Maddi Gordon.

“I’ve never seen a crowd like that in my life ever, ever, ever,” Gordon tells RACER. “I didn’t know what to do. I was beside myself. I’ve truly never seen a crowd where everybody is up. … They stood up; people were standing! I would start cheering and turn back to Paul (Mecca, Ron Capps Motorsports team manager) and be like, ‘They’re all standing. They’re cheering.’

“It honestly blew my mind, I was having a blast.”

The moment came after the second round of eliminations for the season-opening Gatornationals. Five minutes before, Gordon had defeated the eight-time Top Fuel champion and winningest driver in the class, Tony Schumacher, to advance to the semifinals.

It was Gordon’s first weekend in her new ride with Ron Capps Motorsports. In the first round, she beat another former class champion, Shawn Langdon of Kalitta Motorsports.

Ultimately, the magical run ended when Gordon was defeated in the semifinals. Ironically, it came at the hands of yet another class champion, the two-time and defending champion Doug Kalitta.

All three of the drivers that Gordon faced on Sunday are on the NHRA’s top 75 drivers list. Between them, they’ve won 11 championships and 169 races.

Gordon said she "absolutely" got everything she wanted out of her first race day.

“We had no easy hitters … I don’t think it gets any harder than that,” she says. “It was a huge day, for all the guys, too. We built this team from scratch. Our team has spent so many hours and days, would-be weekends, working and building this team. So, they were all so pumped to be racing in the semifinals, and we’re going to be racing on Saturday (in the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge) in Phoenix.

“It’s a really big morale booster for everybody, and makes that work worth it.”

Gordon, a third-generation racer, was hand-picked by Ron Capps to drive the team’s new dragster when he expanded his organization. It’s been nearly two years in the making, since Capps began eying expansion and made it known that Gordon was the one he had his eye on.

Capps has known the Gordon family and by extension Maddi, for many years. And so confident in her abilities and future is Capps that he was ready to get out of his Funny Car seat for her had Caryle Tools, the sponsor, not stepped up.

Aside from her impressive race day run, a number of firsts ended up being crossed off Gordon’s Top Fuel list in Gainesville. Gordon ran the car at night for the first time when qualifying was pushed late into the evening on Friday. She earned career bests in ET and speed and experienced smoking the tires.

“I like to rate my days out of a 10 every single day, and it’s always a 10 because we’re at the racetrack,” Gordon says. “So, I start off that it’s always a 10, but if we’re getting critical, I’m going to say today was a nine. I only take a point off because of my reaction times. Super happy with the car, super happy with the team, super happy with everything, but a point off for the reaction time.

“Other than that, it’s been great.”

The biggest lesson – tied to reaction time – that Gordon will take from her debut is that she needs more time on her practice tree. Gordon will be doing more digesting and dissecting the weekend in the days ahead, but her immediate reflection was that instead of thinking about cutting a good light, her mind is already multiple steps ahead of what she needs to do for a run.

“I’m thinking too much about my procedures,” she says. “I need to just cut it out, zone out and focus on that light, which is what I did in the Alcohol Funny Car. I have confidence I’ll get there.”

NHRA’s next stop is Phoenix, Arizona, in two weeks. Gordon will arrive there fourth in the standings out of her debut and bubbling to get back behind the wheel.

“There were a lot of big, really good moments throughout the weekend,” Gordon says. “Rob [Flynn] and Troy [Fasching] got this car going out fast in the heat, which is awesome. One of the times we went out there and smoked the tires, my first time ever smoking the tires in a Top Fuel car, and it was at 500 feet, which is way farther than I’ve ever smoked the tires, Troy said, ‘Hey, are you sure you’ve never driven one of these before?’ That was a very big confidence boost to me.

“But one of the really cool things, I think, was that I’ve had multiple people compare my interviews to John Force. The thought that my name is coming up in the same sentence as his is really cool. Honestly, I’m just being myself, which is easy for me because I love what I’m doing, and it’s kind of crazy to me that I get to do this 19 more times this year.”