Gordon, Capps, A Stanfield, Gadson Earn Norwalk Ice Cream Scoops
Every drag racer wants to win. Otherwise why bother to spend the time, money and organizational talent to travel to a racetrack and compete? And there are some tracks where a win comes with something special. Not just the Wally winner’s trophy – this year the award is diamond to herald a winner in NHRA’s 75th season – but a memento from that track that’s something special.
That’s why racers were so intent on winning the 20th annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals on Summit Motorsports Park’s dragstrip. Winners get an ice cream scoop trophy (and hopefully some of the delicious ice cream available at this track) to go with their diamond Wally trophies in 2026. One team bagged a pair of them for the first time, doubling up in the pair of nitro classes: Top Fuel and Funny Car.
Ron Capps Motorsports owned race day in Norwalk, Ohio, with freshman racer Maddi Gordon earning her first Top Fuel Wally winner’s trophy – in only her tenth professional race. Gordon’s boss, teammate and three-time Funny Car champion Ron Capps took his third win of this season, to go with his single runner-up result and his pair of No. 1 qualifiers. He now carries the points lead into the second half of the season, while Gordon has elevated herself into fourth place.
That it took Maddi Gordon only ten contests to record her first victory in Top Fuel isn’t much of a surprise. Coming from a racing family, working with a professional group headed by uber-tuner Rob Flynn, Gordon has slotted into this phase of her career like it’s her tenth, not her first year competing at this level. And that’s not far from the truth: Maddi Gordon went to drag races before her birth and has been attending races, working races her entire life.
Before Maddi Gordon came to the Top Fuel wars, she raced her family’s car in Top Alcohol Funny Car and was runner-up at this track in class at the 2024 race. This year her dad was racing that car and he won. She won. It was almost like kismet. As she became the 100th woman an NHRA national event Gordon exulted: “My family being here means so much; they’re what got me here. They taught me everything I know, and without them believing in me when I was driving the Alcohol Funny Car, I would’ve never gotten this opportunity.
“Because I blew some stuff up in that car. I made mistakes. I cost us money. I cost us more work in the shop and I ate myself up over it. They stuck with me and stuck by my side and believed in me and Ron Capps has done the same thing. I’m just so grateful; this is truly the best day of my life,” she said, hugging Capps and track owner Bill Bader, who handed her that famous ice cream scooper.
Gordon qualified fifth for this race, with only her first run down the track tallying less than 300mph. Her second, third and fourth qualifying efforts were all above 330mph and she followed that up with three out of four proper 1,000-foot Sunday runs. On Saturday, Gordon claimed the track record at 3.760-seconds at 339.79 mph. Only her third-round pedal fest with points leader Shawn Langdon fell below the 300mph mark. She also needed some cooperation in the first round against Spencer Massey when crew chiefs noted a problem and needed a little extra time. Massey gave it to them and then went up in smoke on the run.
In her second round Gordon faced 2025 regular season champ Tony Stewart, racing with Elite Motorsports this year; like Massey he, too, smoked the tires and gave away the lap. In the third round both drivers lost traction but it was Gordon, not Langdon who recovered and found the timing lights first. That brought Gordon to her first-ever Top Fuel final round, against four-time champion Antron Brown. As both her father Doug Gordon and team owner Ron Capps waited with their own trophies to greet her, Gordon pulled off her best Sunday pass at 3.786 at 333.16 mph, holding off Brown and his 3.840-second pass and 328.14 mph.
While Langdon still leads the standings ahead of teammate Doug Kalitta (out in the second round), Leah Pruett is third, Gordon’s been elevated to fourth, followed by Brown, Stewart, John Force Racing’s Josh Hart, Billy Torrence, Justin Ashley and Clay Millican. The gap from first to tenth place is a staggering 571 points.
Ron Capps has known the Gordon family throughout much of his 80-win career and his hiring of Maddi Gordon for what was then a possible Top Fuel ride now seems natural and right. That Capps and Gordon managed to double-up in Norwalk was amazing to the team owner; that they actually tripled up with Doug Gordon winning in Top Alcohol Funny Car made the achievement historic. “When her dad won, I thought there’s no way all three of us would win. And then when I won, I thought, oh man, the odds are going to go down now… and she’s running my buddy, AB, who helped me a lot when I became a team owner” five years ago.
“We’ve got two cars that run as one,” Capps said, echoing comments from his crew chief Dean “Guido” Antonelli, earlier in the season. “I’m a small business owner, who never even thought I’d run a business. This helps immensely for paying bills, but we’ve got great partners who help support us, so a huge thank you to all of them,” he added. On Sunday, the driver was announced as part of the West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026.
To earn his third victory of this very special season, Capps and his Toyota GR Supra defeated Bobby Bode’s Ford Mustang, J.R. Todd’s GR Supra, then took on two John Force Racing (JFR) Chevrolets, first vanquishing Alexis DeJoria in the semifinal match and then defeating Jack Beckman in the final round, to expand his points lead over Tony Stewart Racing’s Matt Hagan and his Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat. Todd is third, Beckman fourth, followed by JFR’s Jordan Vandergriff’s Chevy, Chad Green’s Mustang, DeJoria, Austin Prock’s, Spencer Hyde’s and Dan Wilkerson’s Ford Mustangs. The gap from first to tenth places is 369 points.
Austin Prock won the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge Funny Car event on Saturday, and also took the No. 1 qualifier for this race. Driving the Tasca Racing Ford Mustang, Prock beat Matt Hagan and Ron Capps to win the specialty race within this race, joining Langdon and Richard Gadson as winners. Since Pro Stock had its GETTRX All-Star Callout in Norwalk, they did not compete in this contest.
Pro Stock held its GETTRX All-Star Callout on Saturday and that victory went to reigning class champion Dallas Glenn of KB Titan Racing, who became the fourth different winner of this race-within-the-race for the door slammer set. He took the $40,000 prize when red-hot racer Matt Hartford did just that: he fouled at the start line and gave the challenge race to Glenn. To reach the Callout final round, Glenn beat Elite Motorsports Jeg Coughlin Jr. and Aaron Stanfield as he qualified in second place behind teammate Greg Anderson, who nabbed his seventh No. 1 of the season on Saturday. Anderson was gone after the first round on Sunday, falling to journeyman Kenny Delco.
Glenn “made a fantastic run there in the final,” he said. “I’m really excited about tomorrow (race day). I’ve been wanting to get one of these ice cream scoop trophies for a long time.” In his first All-Star Callout this year, Dallas Glenn mused, I don’t know if being in a new car kind of kept me from overthinking anything” in the Callout, “just because there was so much new stuff, or what it was, but I just tried to stay as relaxed as I could.”
The Sunday victor in Pro Stock was Aaron Stanfield of Elite Motorsports, taking his second victory of the season, and using his reaction time skills to take a holeshot victory over hard-charging Matt Hartford, who has easily been one of the tougher cars to catch. While Hartford was quicker at 6.597/207.98 to Stanfield’s 6.626/208.75, using a .002 RT to Hartford’s .037 to eke out the victory, with a margin of 0.0064 seconds giving the Louisiana racer his 16th career win. “I knew I would have to grab some on the tree, and the old hot rod did just enough to pull the win off,” Stanfield said in the Winner’s Circle. “Every time Matt and I race, it’s a good race. It feels great as a driver whenever you’re able to do your job and pull off a holeshot win like that.”
Stanfield thought his day was going to go well: “Sometimes I guess I just wake up on the right side of the bed, and I felt really focused this morning, and I did feel like I was going to have a decent driving day. The combination,” he revealed, “of having a clutch linkage in that perfect spot where the fuel is perfect, it puts me in a spot where I can drive good. I try to go up there and do the same thing every time,” of course, “even in qualifying. I try to be as consistent as I can be.”
As a first-time Pro Stock Motorcycle champion, Vance & Hines Motorsport’s Richard Gadson keeps piling up the numbers on race day, when it matters. He’s also been stellar in the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge races, having won his second such competition in Norwalk against his Suzuki Hayabusa3 teammate, Gaige Herrera, who was the No. 1 qualifier for this race yet managed to foul at the start line for the Mission Challenge. While Gadson didn’t get the No. 1 qualifier in Norwalk, he did get the big prize on Sunday to go with his Saturday triumph, again defeating a fouling Herrera in the finals.
To reach Sunday’s final round, Gadson beat Odolph Daniels’ and Chase Van Sant’s Suzukis, a fouling Joey Gladstone on Matt Smith’s Buell and his teammate, Herrera to earn his sixth Pro Stock Motorcycle victory and second this season. “You know he’s a tough competitor,” Gadson said of Herrera. “He’ll rebound and it’ll probably be hell for us all the next couple of races. I’m really happy and I don’t know if you believe in energies, but I feel like Norwalk owed me one. I got the ice cream scoop that I always hoped for, a double-up with the Mission #2Fast2Tasty wins, and a final round last year. I love Norwalk,” he exulted. “Mr Bader is amazing – this facility is amazing, the ice cream, the whole deal, the whole experience of being here. This is a special place.”
Gadson leads Herrera by 83 points, with Angie Smith, Matt Smith and John Hall hounding the Vance & Hines duo. They’re followed by Chase Van Sant’s Suzuki, Ryan Oehler’s Buell, Jianna Evaristo on the fourth Matt Smith Racing Buell, Brayden Davis on the second Oehler Buell and Suzuki rider Clayton Howey, who was absent this weekend and is 367 points behind Gadson.
The one-week break between Bristol and Norwalk wasn’t enough? NHRA’s Mission Foods Drag Racing Series returns to action in northern California on July 17-19, with the DENSO NHRA Sonoma Nationals presented by PowerEdge. This 11th contest of the season at Sonoma Raceway will, once again, feature the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge and the always-exciting eight-rider GETTRX Pro Stock Motorcycle All-Star Callout.