A force of nature at NHRA Sonoma Nationals
ohn Force talks a lot like he drives.
His delivery isn’t a road course that meanders through gentle twists and turns. It doesn’t drone in circles like a superspeedway. Force is a drag racer, as we are reminded with the Toyota NHRA Sonoma Nationals coming to Sonoma Raceway this weekend, and his words move like his Funny Car. They hurtle off the starting line at hundreds of miles an hour and roar down the track in a straight line.
“Oh, it has its ups and downs like any family,” Force said on a recent phone call when asked about working closely with his drag-racing clan. “But you know, my wife (Laurie) has been with me practically since the beginning, wrote the initial contracts. I couldn’t even spell, you know what I mean? And helped me drive the truck and mix the fuel, helped us financially keep the thing alive.”
He then launched into a rundown of the Force daughters. Adria, 46 and the child of a previous marriage, is CFO of John Force Racing. Ashley, 33, used to drive a Funny Car and now runs the family production company. Courtney, 30, is currently second in the NHRA Mello Yello Funny Car point standings, six places ahead of her old man. And Brittany, 28, is fourth in the Top Fuel standings, having opted for a dragster over the family Funny Car tradition.
“My granddaughter Autumn’s 12, and she’s driving junior dragster,” Force continued. “And they love it. So where else would I be? You know what I mean? This is what I do. At my age, 67, IndyCar, NASCAR, I would have been done 20 years ago. At least 15 years ago. But drag racing - three, four seconds out there, you have to have good reaction. Gotta keep my body in shape. I work in the gym every other day. And I’m still staying with the kids and still loving it.”
Continuing his roll, Force veered into that morning’s media opportunity at Fisherman’s Grotto restaurant along Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, where he had cracked crab for the TV people and chatted with race fans.
“It was unbelievable, the cameras that turned out,” Force said. “I don’t know if they come to gawk at me and laugh at me, or if they respected me. Don’t care, they came.”
They always do. This has not been a banner season for the man who will probably be remembered as the greatest drag racer in history. He finally won his first event in Denver last weekend. It was just the second time he’s made it to the final round. And yet he remains the face of NHRA.
“He’s the preferred driver at every track,” said Force’s publicity man, Elon Werner. “And if he can’t do it, they usually want Courtney or Brittany.”
NHRA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Funny Car division, and John Force has been central to most of those years. He got his first professional Funny Car ride at a race in Australia in the winter of 1974, Force said. He made his first NHRA final round in 1979 and earned his inaugural victory at Montreal in 1987.
Since then Force has strung together 144 career wins and 16 season championships. The NHRA driver with the next-most titles is Bob Glidden (10), and he drove in the slower Pro Stock division.
“They call me a legend,” Force said. “I thought you had to be dead to be a legend.”
Not if you’re willing to devote practically every waking moment of your life to your craft. On the publicity trail, Force remains a relentless worker. Werner estimates that his driver spends 40 weeks a year on the road (Force lives in Southern California, where he grew up), and notes that he always flies commercial routes.
“He just focuses on nothing but NHRA drag racing,” said Robert Hight, who started out working on Force’s car in 1995, later married Adria Force and is now one of the circuit’s top Funny Car drivers. “There’s a lot that goes along with that - the media, the public appearances. But that’s all he thinks about 24/7. That’s how you become a champion.”
The day of the Fisherman’s Wharf appearance, Force said, he awoke at 5 a.m. for workouts and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, which largely fuels his existence. At 10 a.m. he began his media gauntlet with an extended radio spot with Froggy 92.9 FM, Santa Rosa’s country music station.
From there, Force went right into filming a commercial spot for the Sonoma Nationals, then to the staged spectacle at the Grotto, where he broke crabs for a half-hour, then to six one-on-one interviews with local broadcast outlets, then to a long sit-down with five print journalists.
In the afternoon came a slate of phone interviews.
“We went to a NASCAR race for Chevy,” Werner recalled. “The NASCAR people said, ‘Hey, he’s got a 3½-hour break at the start, then we’d like him to sign some autographs, then he’ll have a two-hour break, then we’ve got this other thing.’ I told them, ‘That’s fine, but I need to find something to fill those gaps.’ ”
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