Funny Car drag racer still a ‘Force’ — even at age 67.
SAN FRANCISCO — Still going strong at age 67, drag racer John Force might continue on the NHRA circuit until the day he dies. And perhaps beyond that. “Stuff me like Trigger and take me on tour. Let’s make some money,” Force said in advance of his arrival at Sonoma Raceway this weekend.
“I always tell the networks, ‘If I ever go down on a racetrack, keep filming it.’ Don’t say, ‘Oh, my god, he’s dying! Don’t shoot it!’
“Shoot it! Get some footage and let’s sell some T-shirts!”
Force, a 16-time NHRA Funny Car champion, might not win any more races from the afterlife, but it’s fair to wonder if he’ll remain quotable.
You think he drives fast? You should hear him talk. During a rollicking luncheon to promote the Toyota NHRA Sonoma Nationals that open Friday, Force hit the gas and just kept going.
He zoomed from a story about escaping a fiery crash to one about failing an ink blot test to one about rescuing a lost turtle until — poof! — the parachute in the back of his mind deployed, dragging his brain to a full and complete stop.
“What did you ask me?” Force wondered, more than once.
But just when you think he’s lost a lug nut or two, he went on to record his first victory of the season a few days later. Force finished in 3.965 seconds at 319.45 mph in his Chevy Camaro to capture the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals in Morrison, Colorado, his first victory since June 2015.
In doing so, he beat some whippersnapper named Courtney Force in the final. She’s one of his two dragracing daughters.
“I told Courtney I love her, but I am giving this everything I’ve got,” Force said after the race.
Oldest to win event
The victory made him the oldest driver in NHRA history to win a Funny Car event. So how long will Force keep doing this? Till he’s 70? 80? “I’m not going to kid anybody. At 80 years old, I’ll be kind of ugly,’” he said. “I’m already ugly. But I still love doing it. And I can still compete.
“The day that I go out there and I’m consistently failing, then I’ll quit. But then I’ll become a test pilot and test the cars, so at least I can learn.”
Force cracks that he only works about 7 minutes per year anyway, since his day job requires only a few 4-second bursts on weekends.
That leaves him plenty of down time. And, well, there are stories to tell and races to hype. Over lunch with reporters at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, he blasted through most of his life story before the clam chowder arrived.
Growing up in Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County), he survived childhood polio, although it left one leg shorter than the other. Force now calls his upbringing “Grapes of Wrath” stuff, as his family bounced around from logging camps to migrant farms to Indian reservations and to trailer parks.
“We’d pick berries up and down the coast living in the back of the old buses and dump trucks, with the tarps on top,” he said. “I was in a trailer court my whole life. My parents never owned a home.”
His mother, Betty, managed restaurants like Denny’s and Foster Freeze. His father, Willy, worked as a trucker, whose duties ranged from hauling logs in the Pacific Northwest to delivering cattle to John Wayne’s ranch.
Also, his dad took hay to the Barnum & Bailey Circus.
“I was around the circus a lot as a kid, because it would come in on railroad trains to L.A. in the old days,” Force recalled. “The circus? The cheer of the crowd? That’s where I wanted to be.
“That’s why I wanted to be a policeman. I wanted to wear a helmet. I wanted to save the world.”
Indeed, Force’s original career aspiration was to work for the sheriff’s department. And he was on the verge of landing a job before flunking the ink blot test.
Nobody flunks the ink blot test.
Force blamed his brother, who worked in law enforcement, for advising him to be honest about what he saw on the blotter.
“So when I looked in there, I said, ‘Well, I see women’s ‘somethings’ in there and I see snakeheads over there and the devil is over there,” Force explained. “And I flunked. They said, ‘This guy has a mental problem.’
“And that’s why I’m a drag racer.”
Racked up tickets
Though he lacked a silver spoon, Force made up for it with a lead foot. By one account, he racked up 24 speeding tickets before his 18th birthday.
After brief stints as a shoe salesman and a truck driver, Force decided to make a go of it in racing.
He bought his first Funny Car in 1974 using a tax refund check, as well as money raised by selling the organ his mother-in-law had won on “Let’s Make a Deal.”
But the future member of the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame was slow off the starting line. Over his first 12 years, Force never finished better than second in any national drag racing competition.
Desperate for prize money, the trickle of income left him sharing cramped motel rooms with his crew. But Force broke through on June 28, 1987, and has barely slowed down since.
Entering this weekend, his record 144 career wins make him the winningest driver in drag racing history. He already has seven wins at Sonoma Raceway, the most pro wins by any driver there.
The kid who never had a home growing up now owns a 17,000-square-foot home in Yorba Linda.
And as a sidelight from all those early days without racing paychecks, Force developed a carnival barker’s flair for publicity. At one point during the luncheon, Force spotted a rainbowhued double-decker bus rolling down Bay Street with dancing passengers for a radio promotion. Force nearly jumped out of his chair.
“Look at that guy! Look at that guy going down the street! That’s me!” he said. “If I wasn’t drag racing, I’d be out there. We’re P.T. Barnum. We come to town, we set up the tents, and we’re doing what we love to do.”
Someone gave Force a chance to really let loose by asking him to explain why a new fan should come to the Sonoma Nationals.
Gentlemen, start your notebooks.
“Unbelievable! Tires smoking! Crashes throwing the bodies 300 feet in the air!” Force said. “Drivers punching each other out. And a few wives punching the husbands out.
“A woman can win a race. A guy can win. Then take a break and go into the stands and have the greatest hot dogs in the world. You know what I’m saying?”
This continued for some time.
His enthusiasm for the sport is enough that his converts include his entire family. The John Force Racing team includes the two daughter-drivers, Courtney (Funny Car) and Brittany (Top Fuel), as well as daughters Adria Hight (CFO) and Ashley Force Hood (president, John Force Entertainment.)
But teaching his daughters to race came with some tough love. Because, one-liners aside, Force understands the nitromethane-fueled dangers of the profession. “Don’t think that I still don’t have the fear,” he said. “When you hit that throttle, all hell breaks loose. And you’re hanging on in those few seconds.”
Ready in emergency
Force ventures that he has survived more than 100 crashes and said the key is keeping calm. He trained Courtney and Brittany for such emergencies by putting them in a car and blindfolding them. Then he told them to find the gas pedal. And then the brake. And the fire bottle. And the kill switch. And the ignition switch.
“Because when you’re on fire, and the smoke is pouring through there, and your butt is burning because the tin is burning out of the seat, you better know where all that stuff is,” Force said. “Because the only friend you have is you till the safety safari comes and drags you out is you.”
To make sure Courtney was really ready, Force raised the stakes.
“I sat and slapped her upside in the car,” he said. “She said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said I’m teaching you fight mode. I’m trying to rattle you. I shake you. I hit you. Now find that button. Because if you don’t find that button. … ”
His family, meanwhile, is now urging him to make a movie about his life. People in his circle have fun trying to figure out would play him in the movie.
Force wants Matt Damon to have the starring role but acknowledges that the actor is far too good-looking. His attorney suggested actor Gary Busey, who has both the gravelly voice and the gleefully unhinged demeanor. “Perfect,” Force said. “We both have brain damage.”
About the only thing left is a final scene. Force said his life story has been sold to a New York publisher years ago, but he has complicated things by continuing to race at a high level.
So when will the book come out?
“As soon as I croak,” Force said. “People tell me, ‘It’s your last championship. You need to walk away!’ No, I’m still good at what I do. And I love entertaining, you know what I mean?”