91����

A day after being introduced to the media as Ron Capps Motorsports’ Top Fuel driver of the future, Maddi Gordon warmed up Capps' NAPA Funny Car in the pits at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the third-generation Top Alcohol Funny Car racer’s first real taste of nitro.

That was so cool,” she said, the tears rolling down her cheek probably a mix of noxious nitro and happy tears. “It just rumbles, a different vibration from our alcohol car.”

Gordon looked at home and at ease in the car, wearing a breather mask as she does when she warms up the family’s Beta Motorsports Camaro.

“The cockpit is set up very similar to my car,” she said. “The brake’s in the same spot, clutch, all that kind of stuff. The clutch has a long throw on it compared to my car and the brake is a push brake instead of a pull brake. So, some small differences there, but it is just amazing. I can get used to that for sure.”

Gordon -- who took over the controls of the family flopper last year after her father, three-time world champ Doug Gordon, stepped out to let his daughter drive, much as his father, Mike, had done for him years ago – first warmed up the alcohol car just two years ago as she began her licensing process after years of wrenching on it.

“It did not go very well the first time,” she recalled with a laugh. “My Papa [grandfather Mike] said that sounded like and I was like [crap], but I did the whole thing, revving it up, and all that but I had trouble getting in reverse, so this one went a whole lot better!”

��