John Force Racing

At an age when his peers are content to manipulate nothing more challenging than a TV remote, John Force is back behind the wheel of one of the world’s most powerful race cars trying to add yet another chapter to what already is one of professional sport’s most compelling biographies.

Last year, the 59-year-old icon proved that he still could win races after suffering injuries that would have sent a lesser man straight to the rocking chair. This year he’s focused not just on individual races, but on reclaiming the NHRA Funny Car championship that has been his 14 times in the last 19 seasons.

If he is able to accomplish that goal, he would become the oldest professional champion in motor racing history.

Nevertheless, Force makes no concessions to his age. After two years of rehab from injuries suffered in a Sept. 23, 2007 crash at Dallas, Texas, the 14-time Auto Racing All-America selection has said he is in “the best shape of my life.”

His improved health, coupled with the improved performance of his Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Funny Car in the final races of the 2008 season, send him into the 2009 campaign with lofty goals.

“Our expectation always is to win the championship,” Force said. “To be honest, I really expected more out of me and my race car last year. I wasn’t happy with the way the car ran or with the way I drove it, but we started coming around. When the season was over, I was just getting back to where I needed to be.”

Although he has little left to prove, through all the rehab, Force never once considered taking a desk job after suffering multiple injures that included broken bones in his hands and feet and a compound fracture of the left ankle.

If he never won again, the veteran’s legacy would be secure. Nevertheless, after again finishing seventh in POWERade points last year, he’s anxious to prove that he still has what it takes to compete at the ultimate level.

Although last year he extended to 22 the number of consecutive years in which he has won a tour event and although he became the first drag racer to win 1,000 racing rounds, the statistical legacy that once seemed so important has lost some of its significance.

The 2007 death of Eric Medlen, the teammate he portrayed as “the son I never had,” forever changed the veteran’s priorities and re-directed his energies. Now he is determined to make the sport as safe as he believed it was before the testing accident that snuffed out one of the brightest lights in the series, before his own crash and before the accident last year that claimed the life of two-time series champion Scott Kalitta.

Working with Medlen’s father, John, the NHRA, SFI, Ford Motor Co. and McKinney Corporation, Force demonstrated his commitment to building a safer Funny Car through the creation of The Eric Medlen Project, which operates out of a permanent facility adjacent to the JFR shop facility in Brownsburg, Ind.

In recognition of those efforts, last December Force accepted the Motorsports Achievement Award for “outstanding leadership or contribution to motorsports” from the Society (Society of Automotive Engineers) at its annual convention in Charlotte, N.C.

“I accepted for our team headed by John Medlen, who was really the individual who made all of this possible,” Force said. “It was an opportunity for me to thank the people in the industry who every day dedicate their lives to safety and making things better, not just for drag racing, but for all motor sports.”

A four-time winner of the Jerry Titus Award (presented to the driver who earns the most votes in All-America balloting), Force now is more determined than ever to remain in the cockpit as teammate to a spectacular assembly of young drivers that includes his 26-year-old daughter, Ashley Force Hood, son-in-law Robert Hight, 2008 Rookie of the Year Mike Neff and his two youngest daughters, Brittany, 22, and Courtney, 20.

“It’s all about these kids now,” he said. “I’m still going to race as hard as ever to win the championship. That won’t change. But my main job now is to (continue to)
train (these young) drivers so that they won’t have to go through what I went through.”

Significantly, Force also remains the champion off the track where, even before his crash, he had won the rabid support of millions of blue collar Americans captivated by his self-effacing charm, non-stop banter and unexpected accessibility. In his fourth decade behind the wheel, he still sells more souvenirs, conducts more interviews, signs more autographs and wins more often than anyone else in drag racing history.

While he always has possessed the sport’s fastest mouth, it wasn’t until he hired Austin Coil as crew chief that Force’s car began to keep pace. Their partnership, which began in 1985, has been the most productive in the history of motorsports. In fact, Coil has engineered every one of Force’s career wins, every NHRA series championship and each of his 10 “special event” victories.

Force’s success in straight-line racing belies his early years on the tour, years of on-track futility and off-track vaudeville.

“Anything for gas money to the next race,” he has said. “Anything” included dressing up as a clown for an appearance at Wendy’s, with whom he had a brief sponsor relationship, and as an animated tree for a promotion at an auto dealership. He also appeared in TV ads for Wally Thor’s School of Trucking and briefly considered joining his brother, Walker, in law enforcement.

“I was too slow to play football in college,” said the former starting quarterback at Bell Gardens (Calif.) High School. “Besides, I kept falling over until they figured out that
one leg was shorter than the other (the result of a childhood bout with polio).”

With no license, no sponsor and, really, no clue, Force used a tax refund check and the money gleaned from an organ his mother-in-law won on a television game show appearance to buy a Vega Funny Car from his late uncle, Gene Beaver. He then hustled a winter booking in Australia – even though he didn’t have a license – and, by pure accident, became the first to break the 200 mile an hour barrier there.

“I was a hero,” he said, “until the promoter figured out that we didn’t know
what we were doing. If it hadn’t been for Gary Densham (who drove for Force from 2001 through 2004), I probably wouldn’t have gotten out alive.”

Once back in the states, Force wanted nothing more than to compete. In his first 65 pro starts, he reached the final round nine times – but never made it to the winners’ circle. His fortunes turned in June, 1987, when he earned a breakthrough victory at Montreal, Canada. He’s been virtually unstoppable ever since.