Fresh off a stirring comeback victory, Force vows, ‘I’m gonna fight to win’
After sustaining close to career-ending injuries in a crash in Dallas last year, 14-time NHRA POWERade world champion John Force returned to the winner’s circle at last weekend’s O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals presented by Castrol GTX in Topeka. The victory against Tim Wilkerson was the 126th win of Force’s career and extended his consecutive seasons with a win to 22. The 59-year-old had last won a race Aug. 12, 2007, in Brainerd.
In this transcript from a June 4 national teleconference, Force talked about his most recent win and being back in the game.
Q: Tell us about the win in
Topeka and how emotional it was for you to get back in the winner’s circle.
A: It really was because of my health. In fact, I got off a plane; I had a show in
Kansas City with Castrol following the race on Monday. I got home Tuesday and went straight to the gym last night and went straight back to the gym this morning because I’m still going through my rehabilitation. I’m getting my strength back in my muscles, and it’s starting to show that it’s working because I can drive my race car. So the win was very exciting.
I’ve had a lot of wins. Your first win is always your best. I said in
Atlanta that seeing my daughter win was the biggest in my career because it was my child. I made the statement at
Topeka – because the media kept asking, “Is this your biggest win?” It’s my biggest win for me personally because I bounced back from the crash and I didn’t know if I could win again. I believed it, but it was starting to show that my car; the driver is part of the car. We just couldn’t get that magic to win a race. It was just on my list that I can stay in the business of NHRA POWERade Drag Racing and I can do what I love to do. Being an owner doesn’t excite me. Driving excites me. Working with my drivers excites me.
Q: Does this win help you appreciate things more?
A: I used to take walking for granted. It’s just amazing that life, you just think you’re going to go every day. Let me tell you, just the way I drive my car on the street, I’m very careful at signal lights. I don’t want to speed anymore because I realize death does happen. We lost Eric and then my crash. Safety has just become a priority for us. Winning was everything, but then I woke up one day and realized, “Man was I stupid here.” I’ve got to win, or the sponsors like BrandSource, Old Spice, and AAA that have joined us, they’re not going to pay me if I don’t win.
Q: You’ve never been a driver who has lacked confidence, but it seemed as if your confidence level was down a bit this year. Has this win restored your mentality?
A: I’m mentally back. But do you know what it was really good for? My team. I think it was good for my family. My wife was really excited. She actually wore the medal around her neck, and she’s never done that in 25 years. I said, “Here, this is for you honey.” And she put it around her neck, and we went to the restaurant. That is something for Laurie. Ashley and the girls were all laughing. It was just a good weekend. To see Austin Coil and Bernie Fedderly; I told him, “Maybe I can still do it,
Austin.” I mean I know I can get down the highway, I can drive the race car, but can I be good enough to beat guys like Ron Capps or to go after Wilkerson or beat any of my own teammates? I don’t know yet. But I did get a win, and that means I won’t go winless this year. It’s been so many years; I’d just hate to think for the sponsors that pay me millions that I would go winless. I owe them better than that.
Right now, I’ve got four good race cars. But my team is pumped. All Ford teams were excited. And they all teamed together in the final – we had so many problems – and I go, “Just give me a race car, and I’ll pray this thing to the winner’s circle.” I’ve gotten a lot into praying. I don’t know if he listens to me. And I know the Lord ain’t going to help me win because I pray “Let me win.” It don’t work that way. But it’s mental for me to just try and be a better person.
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Q: Are you giving any thought to retiring after this year?
A: Nope, no thought of retiring. I’m just getting back [to] where I’m getting a second chance. Every day I look at John Medlen. Ford, right now, is in Indy, our new building, because we’re looking at ways to build more safety. I don’t want to retire; I need to be in the car. I’ll be honest, I want to win, but I’ve got good cars. Mike Neff in the Old Spice car has really evolved as a driver. The car has been in two finals. Ashley, she’s second in the points. She’s got a real good, consistent car. It’s not the fastest. But she’s still learning every day. If I had a car that was the best to win the championship, it’s Robert Hight in the AAA Auto Club [Mustang]. He’s my best driver, my best reaction time driver. He’s got the best car, even though it’s struggled in the last three or four races. Jimmy Prock always chases the tune-up, and he’s looking for something bigger and better and the car got off track. He’ll get it back on in
Chicago.
I’m not ready, because when I was in my prime, you had to do everything right to win, and you had to have luck. Well, I’ve got luck on my side, but I don’t have my body physically ready to win. And my car is still not consistent – it was at
Topeka – but it’s still not there yet. But Austin and Bernie, they work on it every day. Robert Hight’s still my car that I favor to win the championship. Don’t get me wrong, I want to. But I look at my cars that are my best cars.
Q: How do you top this emotional level when it comes to your next win?
A: I don’t know. I really want to calm down, and I know how you can win a race and go to the next race and lose first round. So I don’t want to get high on my heels, I don’t want to say that we’re ready, but I will say that I said about me personally going into Topeka, when I did my interview, I said, “Look, I need to start winning here.” And I called my team in, and I said, “Guys, we’ve got to team up.” This was on Friday, not our usual prayer meeting on Sunday morning. I said, “It’s time we start here with these cars. It’s just time to make a move.” We’ve got all the cars in the top 10 right now, so we’re excited about that. I think Ashley’s second, I’m third, Robert is fifth, and Neff’s ninth.
So we’ve got four good Mustangs; we’re excited about that. But you’ve got to go back in with confidence, and yet you’ve got to look at your car and make it the way to be, make the show. The structuring of qualifying with the rules and the Countdown, I need some low e.t.s if I’m going to make the [Showdown] at Indy because I’m not in yet. I’m way out of it because I missed races last year, and I haven’t been qualifying high this year. Ashley and Robert are both in, but Neff and I, we aren’t. But with the Countdown, now the way it is, and the format of racing, you’ve got to get in on that night’s session. So you’ve really got to look at the first round going A to B and making sure that you get some kind of number. And then you can take the chance to go for it that night. If I try to go for low e.t. for the Countdown and I fail, I don’t make the show possibly. It’s different how we go to fight the battle. It’s a lot different than it used to be.
Q: You made a very quick recovery. Where did you draw on your reserve to get yourself back in the car in
Pomona?
A:
There were two things. You know my family. And my wife had said to me, “You know, you may not ever win again, but if you don’t get back in that driver’s seat, no one could live with you.” She knows how much I love it; it’s been everything to me. Cars have been my life. I lived in a car practically growing up; you know what I’m saying. My books were in there, my football helmet, my girlfriend’s picture; I lived in a little trailer house, and I didn’t have a room, so I didn’t go home until everybody was sleeping. And so the car was the way of life for me. And then racing and the 18-wheelers on the interstate, it was just a way of life for me, driving trucks. And then race cars.
So I had to get back. Do you know that I carry a letter in my briefcase that my girls, it’s got a little apple on it, and it says “from your girls.” It’s from Adria and
Ashley, Brittany, and Courtney, and basically it was like, “You know Dad, if you want to retire, we’d be happy with that so we could just have you. Ashley wants to be sure you’re at the wedding.” Ashley wants her dad at the wedding. I just read this in an article that she did; she had never said it. But during my crash, my wife said that she went outside of the hospital room and fainted. And I said I didn’t know all that happened, and she said she’d just lost her dad. And she’s never said that to me. I read it in the paper in
Topeka, and it was kind of shocking. And she said all the dreams in your life about your dad at your wedding, she thought they were all gone. She was the one that thought she had lost me. When my wife always believed that no one could get me, right?
At the end of the day, I think it was the letter from them and the fans, the phone calls and the letters of people who stood outside the hospital. Brandon Bernstein and [Morgan] Lucas and [Whit] Bazemore, everyone. Ron Capps, Bernstein, everybody came. I was like, “I’ll be okay, just leave me alone and I can do this.” Everybody cared, and it shows how great a family NHRA is. And then in the process, every day I lay there I thought about Eric. I thought, “I owe Eric.” I’ll admit, it scared me. I’ve never been scared in all my fights. I’d come out yelling and screaming, and I just believed that I couldn’t be hurt, you know, I was untouchable. And all of a sudden I lay there and thought, “Man what people believe, it ain’t true. What people think about you, you’re a mess right now.” And I just thought, “I don’t know if I can do this.” But there were so many people supporting me.
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Q: With Hillary Will, Ashley, and Melanie Troxel winning this season, what does it do for the men and what kind of benefits do you think it will have for the sport?
A: Well, it makes the men think, “Gee, we thought we were hot stuff, and we weren’t.” We didn’t believe; we’d watch women from Shirley Muldowney all the way up through the ranks of the dragsters. Hillary Will winning this weekend [
Topeka]. Melanie Troxel that won, women can win in Top Fuel. But we never thought that women could handle these Funny Cars. And [Danica Patrick’s] first win in
Japan in the Indy car, it was like, wow. And then Melanie backs that up at
Bristol, then all of a sudden women are in the ballgame. And the boys have another fight on their hands. But I think the men, you know, are a little bit envious because they want to win. I think they also realize that half the grandstands are full of women. And that now we’ve given something that the husband doesn’t say, “Come to the races with me today and watch my heroes.” And the women are like, “Okay, we’ll go there.” And all of a sudden they’ve got their own women, they can create their own heroes. And what this brings is Corporate America. Corporate
America comes here and says, “Whoa, we’ve got female drivers.” I know, because I’ve got BrandSource on my car, which is home appliances. They use Ashley, they use
Brittany, and they use Courtney. At the races, because we won the race at
Topeka, they gave away a washer and a dryer to a fan that won the contest because we won.
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So we’re creating new ways for families to get involved and ways for sponsors to go to market instead of just going out there. We sell oil, we sell cars, you know we do what we have to do. We sell tires, and at the end of the day, bringing in the female products, like the Old Spice you know, we’re affiliated with one of their brands, Secret, with Ashley and my two younger girls. Women winning is a big positive in the world for all sports. And this economy that we’ve got, you know, you see me run around with an Old Spice towel around my neck. Well, it’s a way to generate some exposure, and we put it in a contest and we give the money to charity. At the end of the day, we’ve got to be creative because the world is in a crunch. Not just, this isn’t just from Sept. 11, this is because of the fuel and the economy and the stock market, and we’ve got to find new ways to sell the sponsors. And the females are making that possible.
Q: Do you still feel you need another championship to validate everything that you went through?
A: There are so many kids that want to win a championship. My daughter is one of them; Robert Hight is just frothing at the mouth. And Mike Neff, you know he won it with Gary Scelzi [as a crew chief], so he wants to win. But there’s so many kids out there that want a chance. And that’s what’s good about the new Countdown; it doesn’t allow someone to just run away with it. I ran it away those years, and I’d have it wrapped up at
Dallas. And now that the points structure has changed, it’s leveling the playing field for this playoff.
Would I like another championship? Yeah, I’d like to add to my legacy, so to speak; it’s all I’ll have in my old age. But the real truth is, I’m for growing the sport. And if one guy wins too much, that’s not good. So it’s good for it to spread out so we can all keep our sponsors.
Don’t misunderstand me; I’m gonna fight to win. And I want to win because I came back from my crash. But there’s so many others that are deserving. I’m gonna do my best job; if I get it, I get it. But if I don’t, there ain’t nothing that is going to tear me apart. And if one of my teammates get it, well then that will be the icing on the cake. But if some other kid gets it, I’m gonna stand there and praise them for getting that chance. Ron Capps is way overdue. [
Del] Worsham is way overdue. You know what I’m saying, because they’ve worked really hard. And they’re going to get it; it’s just a matter of time. And so does my buddy Wilkerson, so I just wish them all good luck and tell them I love ‘em and let’s be safe in these cars, and when we know we’re safe, let’s go racing.
