Funny Car veteran won third nationals of year at Charlotte

In the old TV series “Happy Days” there was a scene during which Richie and Ralph Malph were watching the Bears lose to the Chicago Cardinals of the 1950s on TV. After Ed Brown’s pass was intercepted, Richie suggested the Bears put in their backup quarterback.

Ralph said no way, that guy must be 30 years old, he was washed up. To which Richie Cunningham replied: “Whaddya mean, washed up? George Blanda must have two or three good years left.”

The joke was that the episode was filmed during the early 1970s when Blanda still was playing in the NFL.

George Blanda retired in 1976 at the age of 48; Julio Franco was 49 when he retired from Major League Baseball in 2007, a few months after he had homered into the swimming pool in Phoenix off Randy Johnson.

John Force, on the other hand, still is tearing up the quarter-mile (or thereabouts) on the NHRA Funny Car circuit.

Last weekend in Charlotte, he won his third nationals of 2016 and climbed to third place in the six-race Countdown to the Championship, the penultimate stage of which is set for Las Vegas Motor Speedway on October 27-30. John Force is 67 years old. John Force is amazing. Methuselah, start your engine. “I have a race car now that I can race with,” the effusive Force said with his usual gusto after edging top qualifier Tommy Johnson Jr. on Bruton Smith’s four-wide strip in North Carolina.

It was career victory No. 146 for the 16-time champion. It came just two seasons after Castrol dropped financial support of his operation after 27 years, and Ford withdrew after 17, which made John Force’s head spin faster than usual. To use his expression on those old TV commercials, how in the heck was he going to keep the candles lit with half his budget eliminated? “I was almost out,” he said. He had to lay off people and cut corners and wrap baling wire around the shoestrings. But 67-year-old John