Force’s luck not too great in early going

John Force is perfect on the season: three NHRA events and three harrowing engine explosions.

The 16-time NHRA funny Car champion blew another one during Friday’s qualifying for the Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla., creating a fireball that sent the carbon fiber body of his Chevrolet dragster flying dozens of feet in the air and landing halfway between the strip and the grandstands.

Force, 68, sustained a cut across the back of his right hand. He had it bandaged at the end of the track, but did not need stitches.

Force joked that at least he didn’t get hit with another bill for an ambulance ride.

“I really thought we had it,” Force said, referring to the “gremlin” that caused engine problems in each of the first two events in 2018. “I thought we were there. … That was another body and that hurts the financial. I was out $500,000 to $600,000 and now we are probably out $800,000 going on a million. In drag racing, you have to be tough.”

No one in NHRA has had to bounce back more than Force this season.

He endured the first blown engine during a qualifying run at the season-opening Winternationals in Pomona, Calif., in early February. As he neared the finish line, his engine erupted so violently that it sent the car body flying through the air in pieces. Force walked away unscathed.

One of his two racing daughters, Brittany, wasn’t as lucky two days later.

Brittany Force, 31, was hospitalized overnight following a hard crash in an elimination race. She escaped internal injuries and sustained only “upper-body soreness.”

She was back in the car two weeks later in Chandler, Ariz.. She qualified 14th and was beaten in the second round of eliminations.

“It’s what we do, like the people in the circus, the ones that swing from the ceilings, the trapeze,” John Force said then. “It’s what you do. It’s your living.”

Four in a row?

Kevin Harvick will be going for his fourth consecutive NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series victory today at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.

“I’m just happy to win one, let alone two in a row, three in a row,” Harvick said Friday at Auto Club Speedway. “And this most likely probably will be the only opportunity that you’ll ever have to do it because it’s hard just putting a whole day together.”

The feat has been accomplished by 14 NASCAR drivers, most recently by Jimmie Johnson in 2007.

AP/Los Angeles Daily News/WILL LESTER Funny car driver John Force suffers an engine explosion at Chandler, Ariz., on Feb. 28. Force has detonated engines in all three NHRA events this season.