Brittany Force in chase for title
She’s racing for Top Fuel championship
If championships are all in the family, Brittany Force has a good shot at winning the Top Fuel title in this weekend’s NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series finale in Pomona, Calif.
Force trails Steve Torrence by 20 points entering the Auto Club NHRA Finals. A round win at Pomona is worth 30 points, so the Top Fuel championship could go to the driver who rolls through the most rounds.
Force is the 31-year-old daughter of John Force, a drag racing legend who owns 16 NHRA Funny Car championships. Brittany drives for her father, whose hands are involved in virtually every aspect of John Force Racing.
“We’ve talked quite a bit,” Brittany said of her father. “He just tells me to have fun. ‘You love driving your car. This race is no different than any other race. Just have fun. That’s when you do your best.’ ”
A championship would make Force only the second female driver to win the Top Fuel title. Shirley Muldowney, an icon in the sport, won it three times, the last in 1982.
Brittany, one of three Force daughters who followed their father into the sport, has had her biggest successes during the most important part of the season — the Countdown to the Championship. In five Countdown races, she has two victories, one runner-up finish and one semifinal run, which boosted her from sixth in the standings to second. In the last two races, Force scored a win at Dal- las and was runner-up at Las Vegas.
“We’re still on a high from last weekend (at Las Vegas),” she told USA TODAY. “We made it to the finals, and that moved us way up there in the standings. Our team has the energy from Vegas. This is it. This is our chance to show everybody what we can do.”
Force has six career wins but no championships.
“It’s all I’ve been thinking about since we left Vegas — every scenario, every way it could all wind up,” she said. “You can’t get that out of your mind as a driver. I’m sure my team is there, as well.”
Force has rallied after what she called a “rough start” to the season. A midseason test at Indianapolis helped the team turn a corner, she said.
“We figured our car out right in the heat of battle,” she said. “We found some issues and turned things around. At the start of the year, it was tough. We couldn’t seem to get down the racetrack.”
Torrence, also seeking his first championship, is expected to be tough to beat. He has advanced to 11 final rounds this season and has been in the points lead for much of the year.
In Funny Car, Robert Hight, Force’s brother-in-law and John Force Racing teammate, leads Ron Capps by 15 points. Courtney Force, Brittany’s younger sister, sits third, 125 back.