Nitro Dogs Racing » Force Is Back………..

22. February 2008

Force Is Back………..

Filed under: Daily Entry — admin @ 19:08

Fourteen-time Funny Car champion John Force didn’t lose his flair for the dramatic or his passion for NHRA POWERade drag racing in last September’s dramatic accident that sidelined him for four months. He thrilled the faithful at the season-opening CARQUEST Auto Parts NHRA Winternationals by waiting until the last qualifying session to make the field and then racing through to the semifinals in typical Force fashion.

The winner of a record 125 NHRA national events also touted the numerous safety changes in the Funny Car class that his team, along with NHRA, is spearheading and addressed the concerns of the naysayers who are resistant to change. It’s obvious Force is more concerned about building a better car than he is with winning races at the moment, but with three of his John Force Racing Mustangs reaching the final four in

Pomona, he just might be able to do both.

In this exclusive question and answer session with NHRA.com, Force discusses the many things on his mind these days.

Q: How did it feel to be back in your Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Mustang?

Q: So you’re pressing forward?
Force: I’ll never stop. Ford is spending so much money. Dan Davis told me he doesn’t even want to talk about the expense of this deal. But he knows we need a better car. They’re waiting to get these new cars, put crash dummies in ‘em, and throw ‘em against the wall and see what happens. They’re committed to this.

This car we have now isn’t the final product. It took NASCAR nine years and $900 million to build the Car Of Tomorrow. We’re gonna need years. The tub we have in there now is a three-piece tub, not a one-piece. That’ll need to change.

The NHRA is very involved with this. I keep hearing they’re not but they are.
Tom Compton,
Graham Light, Dan Olson, they’ve flown to Indy so many times to go to the meetings, to observe what’s going on.
Compton wanted to build his own Funny Car and I told him he can’t do that, to just let us be the test pilots.

They hired Doctor [John] Melvin and I can tell you for sure he ain’t cheap. That’s the guy that did the Car Of Tomorrow for NASCAR. Gary Nelson from NASCAR is involved. He said to surround the driver with armor.

It’s heavy but so what? It’s safer. We’re still putting on a great show. They said I went in the sand in
Phoenix in testing because the car was heavy. That’s wrong. Not even close. I had Ashley’s body and the pads and levers are different than mine. I’m rusty, okay. I was hitting the padding not the levers. It was my fault.

Bottom line, we need to race because that’s what we do. We need to put on that show. But we also need to be safe. We need to be able to go home at the end of the day. We all need to be a part of this. The future is now.

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