At 70, NHRA legend John Force still has eyes on win No. 150 and 17th championship

John Force has gone a year since his last NHRA Mello Yello Series Funny Car victory.

For a while, it looked like John Force never would win one single NHRA Funny Car race. But he said, “Every time it looked like it was over, it was like God put a beam of light on me and led me on to the next stop in the journey.

“I was just an old dumb truck driver. Why did (the fans) want me? I guess because I always liked the big burnout. I knew I couldn’t win anything, but the fans loved those big, smoky burnouts. Even when I lost, I was willing to talk more than the guys who had beat me. Then that became almost as big as me winning races,” he said. “That’s what got me here, talking and telling stories.”

Through the years, Force’s stories have rocketed from zero to hilarious in a nanosecond, and they’ve been poignant. They’ve been uproariously funny. They’ve made him vulnerable. They’ve made tears run down everyone’s cheeks, sometimes from laughing, sometimes from crying. They’ve displayed his passion. He has spun wisdom from his lessons learned, compassion from tragedy, and pure entertainment from the goofy, misguided, and overeager antics of his 42 years as a professional drag racer.

But as he goes once again for his NHRA-record-extending 150th victory this weekend at the Dodge Mile-High Nationals near Denver, Force is nobody’s fool. He commands an audience because he is the Muhammad Ali of drag racing. His words entertain, and sometimes they sound over the top. But they’re significant because he’s significant.

Ali had a canvas ring; Force has two ribbons of concrete and asphalt. And like Ali, Force has no one in his league. He hasn’t played rope-a-dope for a long time. He clearly has struggled in later years. But he’s not down for the count, by any means.

Consider that Force has more triumphs than Tony Schumacher, with 84 victories, and Larry Dixon, with 62 – the two most successful drivers in Top Fuel, NHRA’s headliner class – combined. Inactive Warren Johnson leads the Pro Stock victories list at 97. So Johnson’s count trails Force’s by 52 – the total number of victories by retired five-time Top Fuel champion Joe Amato, who’s No. 3 on the dragster list.

The all-time leader in Pro Stock Motorcycle victories is Andrew Hines with 53. He’s the key player at bike icon Vance & Hines, which has racked up 130 victories among him, Eddie Krawiec, and older brother Matt Hines. That means Force has won 19 more races than Pro Stock Motorcycle’s elite organization has won altogether.

At age 70, the Yorba Linda, California, racer still is an inspiration. Bob Tasca III, a one-time quasi-protégé of Force when the latter raced a Ford, has seen his career take an upswing lately. But he still pays homage to Force. When Tasca defeated Force in the final last month at Bristol, Tennessee, Tasca said, “I was prepared to burn him to the ground (in a staging duel, if necessary). There is no one out here I get up more for than John Force. That is because I have the ultimate respect for him.

“I don’t think anyone out here can live to be 1,000 and do what that man has done in a race car,” Tasca said. “So you’d better pay attention when you run the champ. And that’s what he is to me, a mentor.”

Make that the 16-time champion. But Force would pooh-pooh that. He said, “I don’t want to hear about rounds that I’ve won. I don’t want to hear 16 championships ever again until I get to 17 or 18. That’s what I live for. That’s where I’m going. The rest is up to my crew chiefs and the good Lord.”

He hears what critics say: “I should get out at my age, people say. No reason for me to quit. This is what I do.”

Since he won his first race in 1987, Force has won at least one event every year except 2009. He’s in danger of repeating that one hiccup 10 years ago. He hasn’t won this year. But only a cynic would assume Force won’t rebound. Force saw a 395-race qualifying streak end, but he came back for a string of 221 straight races before another rare failure to qualify last year.

Many figured his career was over in late 2007, when he suffered multiple fractures and assorted other injuries in a nasty crash near Dallas. But by preseason testing that winter, he was back in his car, still wearing casts, and posted another top-10 finish by year’s end. His most recent series championship came in 2013, and he’s contending for a 17th. He entered this weekend’s event second in the standings. 

Ironically, Bandimere Speedway here at Morrison, Colorado, is where Force recorded victory No. 149. So it has been one full year since he stood in the winners circle. He has this weekend’s race and 10 more in 2019 to notch another year with at least one victory.

And he’s at a venue where he has had success. His first victory here was in 1994. He won again in 1995 and 1996. During the past 25 years, Force has won or been runner-up in virtually every third start. In addition to eight victories, he has been runner-up three times, losing to current points leader and teammate Robert Hight (2010, 2014). Force has one more victory at Bandimere Speedway than Pro Stock greats Bob Glidden and Allen Johnson, definite Kings of the Mile-High Mountain. Force was also the first driver, regardless of classification, to break the 300-mph barrier at Bandimere in 1996.

Following his victory here last July, Force – recovering from three spectacular and costly crashes and a DNQ at Houston that began his season – said, “I found myself with all the crashes and everything that happened probably at the lowest point in my career. It has been worse than when I crashed in 2007. I have been fighting to get back. I never let on to anyone, but it showed that I just looked like a mess. I am fighting to get back. I had four crashes, and after my last one, I had [track owner] John Bandimere call me and say, ‘We have to talk.’ I said, ‘I know you love God, and I know where you want to go.’ He told me to listen to him, and he set me straight.

“I didn’t know if I would ever get back in position to win a race. Bandimere told me I could, and I won’t stand here and preach the Gospel, but he said when I get to Denver, I will be fixed. He didn’t say I was going to win but that I would be fixed. He told me to ‘Go out there and show me who John Force is.’”

John Force has his confidence back, and he has had to call on it at every race this year. It has come through. Force has moved up steadily from sixth place to second in the standings. He has raced to seven semifinal rounds and that final at Bristol for a 21-13 race-day record so far. He has lost in the first round only one time this season, at the most recent race, at Epping, New Hampshire. At Houston this spring, he atoned for the 2018 DNQ by qualifying No. 1 along with Top Fuel-driving daughter Brittany.

“In my career I’ve done a lot of things, won a lot of specialty races, but anytime this sport brings me together with my children, that’s what I really love about NHRA drag racing,” he said.

“I’ve got confidence, not just in my car. I have confidence in me,” he said. And he has been approaching his attack from every angle: “I’ve had to make a lot of changes myself, [and] I’ve found out a lot of stuff. I’ve been going to doctors, got special glasses [and been] working on eating habits, [trying to] get off that sugar. I’ve said it before: I’m in the game. That (150th) win is coming.”

At the Epping event, Force said, “I keep missing that shot at 150, but there isn’t anything you can do about that. I’m proud of this car, and all we can do is move to the next race.” At Chicago, he said, “We keep putting ourselves in a position to win. I’m getting more confident every week. I’m using every trick I’ve got to run with these kids. but it’s going to happen. At Atlanta, Force said, “I’m learning how to drive again. I think we’re getting there. We’re going to get 150, but I’m not focusing on that. I’m focusing on going rounds, doing my job. The wins will come. We’re close. I’m in the hunt, and I love it. I love driving this hot rod.”

That’s exactly why he’s well beyond that first victory he thought he never would achieve.

John Force returns to the site of his most recent NHRA Funny Car victory — Bandimere Speedway near Denver — this week.

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