{"id":103522,"date":"2025-11-20T09:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T17:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=103522"},"modified":"2025-11-24T13:21:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:21:25","slug":"rob-flynn-named-maddi-gordons-top-fuel-crew-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/rob-flynn-named-maddi-gordons-top-fuel-crew-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Flynn Named Maddi Gordons Top Fuel Crew Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Courtesy of Ron Capps Motorsports<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Canadian Rob Flynn, the NHRA nitro tuner who helped Mike Salinas become the first NHRA Top Fuel driver to 300mph in the eighth-mile, has a new home for the 2026 season. The veteran will tune Maddi Gordon as she begins her first professional season in Top Fuel, racing for Ron Capps Motorsports. Gordon was named to the seat in April of this year and her sponsorship with Carlyle Tools took center stage at this month\u2019s SEMA show.<\/p>\n

Now some of the larger checks on the new team\u2019s checklist have found their way to reality. Gordon, a sophomore in the Top Alcohol Funny Car ranks during the 2025 season is a third-generation driver in that class. She\u2019s running for 2026 Rookie of the Year as she embarks on her professional career in the dragster class. \u201cIt really feels like everything is starting to come together now,\u201d Capps revealed in naming Flynn as crew chief. \u201cWe have the driver, we recently announced the sponsor, we\u2019ve started acquiring assets – and now with the addition of Rob, it feels like we\u2019ve got all the major items in place and can start to fill in the blanks, really proceeding full speed ahead with our 2026 plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the 21-year-old Gordon begins this next, giant step in her straight-line career, she\u2019ll have an experienced nitro crew chief who owns 36 visits to the Winners Circle, but what likely closed the deal for Capps and his Funny Car crew chief, Dean \u201cGuido\u201d Antonelli, who will be working alongside Flynn, is that the veteran was working most recently with Scrappers Racing, as crew chief for Jasmine Salinas\u2019 Top Fuel dragster. She made her dragster debut in 2024 with Flynn at the helm and, this past season, Flynn tuned Salinas to back-to-back semifinal results in the first two 2025 contests. She advanced to the quarterfinals at the third event and raced in the final quad at the Las Vegas Four-Wide NHRA Nevada National before funding issues sidelined her team.<\/p>\n

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Rob Flynn – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Going from tuning Mike Salinas to working with his daughter, Flynn\u2019s work ethic and his ability to enhance a driver\u2019s capabilities were key to this hiring. HIs outwardly calm demeanor didn\u2019t hurt, either. As Capps explained, \u201cI\u2019ve known Rob and his family for quite a long time. We worked together at Don Prudhomme\u2019s years ago when I drove for \u2018Snake.\u2019 I\u2019ve always admired him and his style of leading a team: his professionalism on and off the track. He\u2019s got a great record and we feel he will be a great fit with our organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the choice went to both Capps and Antonelli. \u201cSince we first decided to expand the team and add a dragster,\u201d Capps said, \u201cI\u2019ve always said it was his [Antonelli\u2019s] decision, because even though they\u2019ll be running two completely different cars, they\u2019ll be working together. Rob has always been at the top of our list, and I\u2019m so happy that it all worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to working with the Salinas family, Flynn\u2019s experience includes such stars as Brandon Bernstein, \u201cHot\u201d Rod Fuller, Leah Pruett and past world champs Doug Kalitta, Shawn Langdon and eight-time Top Fuel titleholder Tony Schumacher. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to working with Maddi next year,\u201d Rob Flynn stated. \u201cI learned a lot working with Jasmine these last two years, and it was a pretty similar situation, where she came to the team with driving experience, but was new to nitro which, as we all know, is a whole different beast. You could really see this past year that she felt comfortable in the car and had grown confident in her abilities. That really translated on the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely one of the biggest things I learned,\u201d Flynn explained, \u201cwas not to rush things and push too hard. Early on that first year, I think I pushed too hard when I should have been focusing on getting the car to go down the track, A to B. I want to give Maddi lots of straight, smooth runs down the track and build some confidence that the car is going to go to the finish line every time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d he added, \u201cthere will be times where there\u2019s some tire shake or tire smoke, but I think Maddi feels confident that we\u2019re going to give her a car that will go down the track and not put her in a position where she\u2019s behind it, that will help make her feel more comfortable and at ease. Most drivers say it takes 50-60 runs to get comfortable, and I think that tracks. So, my plan is to spend that time getting Maddi used to making runs, and then we can step it up from there,\u201d Flynn concluded.<\/p>\n

Gordon closed out her second Top Alcohol Funny Car season with three national events wins and a third-place overall result for the year. She will begin her Top Fuel licensing process this winter. Gordon intends to make her professional debut in the Carlyle Tools Top Fuel dragster at NHRA\u2019s 75th anniversary season-opener, the NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, FL, March 6-8. \u201cI feel so lucky we were able to lock Rob in as my crew chief,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s comforting, knowing that he has experience with first-year drivers. Jasmine and Rob were off to a great start last year, and it was a bummer they weren\u2019t able to keep that going. But I\u2019m glad when the opportunity became available, we were able to scoop him up!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian Rob Flynn, the NHRA nitro tuner who helped Mike Salinas become the first NHRA Top Fuel driver to 300mph in the eighth-mile, has a new home for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":103523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470,5029],"tags":[11739,7,442],"class_list":["post-103522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-racing","tag-maddi-gordon","tag-nhra","tag-ron-capps","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/unnamed-8.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-qVI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103522"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103589,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103522\/revisions\/103589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}