Maddi Gordon continued to gain experience at the inaugural NHRA Potomac Nationals, where she lost a close opening-round race Sunday morning at Maryland International Raceway. The NHRA Rookie of the Year contender made a string of consistent passes across qualifying and eliminations, giving her confidence in her Rob Flynn and Troy Fasching-tuned Carlyle Tools Top Fuel dragster as the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series kicked off a stretch of three consecutive races. Gordon held on to her No. 6 position in the Top Fuel points standings.
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In the opening qualifying session, Gordon powered to a 3.840-second pass at 330.39 mph to streak to the provisional No. 2 spot, earning two championship bonus points in the process. She improved to a 3.805 E.T. at 332.34 mph in the second session to sit fifth going into Saturday. A consistent 3.808-second pass followed in the third session on Saturday. That performance came with another bonus point, as it was the third-quickest pass of the session. Gordon\u2019s only instance of tire smoke all weekend struck in the final qualifying session, and she ended up No. 6 on the final qualifying order.
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Gordon rolled into Sunday eliminations facing No. 11 qualifier Will Smith. The two drivers ran nearly identical passes, with Gordon matching her qualifying performance with a 3.805 E.T. at 330.07 mph, but Smith moved first and won with a 3.802 E.T.
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\u201cQualifying went really well, and I really felt confident going into race day today,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cWe\u2019re making runs up and down the racetrack in our Carlyle Tools dragster, getting me more experience in the car. We were trying to run a mid-3.70. I technically didn\u2019t lose on a holeshot, but it feels like I did because I just didn\u2019t have a good light. I missed the tree and I\u2019m pretty bummed about that, but we win and we lose as a team. Like Chuck (Grospitch), our car chief said, the windshield is a lot bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason, so we\u2019ll just look forward and do better at the next one.\u201d
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Before she moves on to the next stop on the NHRA Mission Foods Series schedule, Gordon will head to the High Performance Expo (HPX) in Charlotte, where she\u2019ll appear as a featured speaker. Gordon\u2019s rookie season will then continue at the NHRA New England Nationals, June 5-7, at New England Dragway in Epping, N.H. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The post Maddi Gordon Shows Consistency at Inaugural NHRA Potomac Nationals<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maddi Gordon continued to gain experience at the inaugural NHRA Potomac Nationals, where she lost a close opening-round race Sunday morning at Maryland International Raceway. The NHRA Rookie of the Year contender made a string of consistent passes across qualifying and eliminations, giving her confidence in her Rob Flynn and Troy Fasching-tuned Carlyle Tools Top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}