May The Force Be With Elon Werner

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December 3rd, 2020

Another pinch-hitting effort from my esteemed former colleague Elon Werner, and it’s a classic. I’ve been waiting for his first deep dive into the world of John Force Racing, and here it is. And I know this is but a drop in the bucket when it comes to such JFR stories.

Great blog. Please let Elon know you liked it by clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom of the blog.

Thanks, everyone!

Bob

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It was a historic weekend for college football, as Sarah Fuller became the first female to play in a Power-5 NCAA football game, last Saturday, when Vanderbilt was defeated by the University of Missouri. Due to a Covid outbreak on the special teams unit, she was called upon to kick for the Commodores. She was the women’s soccer goalie at Vandy, and out-kicked all the other applicants for the job.

I was tuned in to the game to support the Mizzou Tigers and didn’t realize I would also get to see a little history as a bonus. It was a Mizzou rout but I was hoping for the Commodores to make a deep push into Tiger territory to give Fuller a shot at a field goal or at least a PAT. I was ultimately left with the satisfaction of seeing her kick-off to start the second half. It was a cool moment for sure and I hope it leads to more opportunities for females across the sports landscape.

I have been fortunate to work in the NHRA sports universe for almost three decades. It is a place where there has never been a need for a diversity program or Title IX. Men and women compete at the highest levels of the sport all the time, in every category, and have been stomping on the loud pedal (shout out to Clay Millican) against each other since the 1960s.

In the mid-2000s I was lucky, thanks to a recommendation by Dave Densmore, to join the PR team at John Force Racing. At the time John Force’s three daughters were cutting their teeth in the sportsman ranks with Ashley Force racing Top Alcohol Dragster and Brittany and Courtney racing Super Comp. The first of the Force daughters to make the jump to the pro ranks was Ashley and she took the unusual path of racing a Nitro Funny Car starting in the 2007 season. I say unusual because prior to Ashley’s move there had been only about a dozen woman to consistently race in a class that was known for forcing drivers to “man handle” their short wheel-based, front engine race cars down the track. The list of female Funny Car competitors has some recognizable as well as little-known names, including the likes of Shirley Muldowney, Melanie Troxel, Vicky Fanning, Rodalyn Knox, Paula Martin, Paula Murphy and more. 

Ashley was not just taking on a tough class but she was also stepping into an arena her father had dominated for well over a decade. The comparisons were inevitable and also incredibly unfair. John Force was brash and outspoken while Ashley Force was mild-mannered, not quite shy, but definitely reserved in her personality. She was friendly and out-going, great with the fans but she wasn’t going to invite a total stranger to tour her lounge in the transporter just because they had traveled 500 miles to see her race. That was more her dad’s style. As soon as she strapped into her Castrol GTX Funny Car, fans and many in the media immediately expected her to make history as the first female to win a Funny Car national event and championship. They brought up the usual expectations of great team, great crew chiefs, a massive budget and of course she was John Force’s kid. That fact alone should give her at least 1-2 round wins every race day, some people scoffed. 

Ashley’s rookie season was solid when you consider how tumultuous it was. In March she suffered the unimaginable loss of teammate Eric Medlen in a testing accident following the Gatornationals, and six months later John Force survived the most harrowing crash of his career in Dallas. He is still racing with us thanks to safety improvements the team made following Medlen’s tragic death. She raced to three semifinals and was the first woman to reach a Funny Car final, losing a close race to Tony Pedregon at the second Las Vegas National event. That was the first piece of history I saw with Ashley but it would be far from the last.

The first female Force daughter went on to stamp her name forever in the record books with an amazing win in 2008 at the Southern Nationals in Atlanta. It was a wild weekend and solidified my unique relationship with Ashley. There are a couple things you need to know about the Atlanta race. At the time the JFR chef, an amazing culinary artist named Jonny Roscher, was at every national event where he prepared special meals for the team. For the Southern Nationals Jonny rolled out a ton of southern favorites including the best fried chicken I have ever eaten. It was so good it was better the next day cold.

Atlanta is always a busy race since Coca-Cola, the series sponsor at the time, has their world headquarters just down the road, so there are extra meet & greets or fan events for a lot of the teams. I didn’t get a chance to get chicken on Friday, so on Saturday morning Jonny offered me a piece with the caveat I couldn’t eat it in the pits because then all the crew guys would want some. I told him no problem, I was headed out to an ESPN media event with Ashley and her fiancé Danny Hood. They were going to film a Newlywed-style game show segment with some other couples that were drivers on the tour. I grabbed a piece of chicken, wrapped it in a napkin, and tucked it into my pocket.

As I was leading Ashley and Danny to the set I begin to slow down and eventually I pointed out the stage. I fell behind them as we approached the set up and I thought I was out of Ashley’s field of vision when I pulled out my piece of chicken. I miscalculated how wide her peripheral vision was and as I was taking my first bite Ashley exclaimed, “Did you just pull a piece of chicken out of your pants?!” I was busted and that became a running joke between us for years. The driver and PR person relationship is a strange dichotomy.

Fast forward to race day and it was one of the worst days at the track. It rained off and on and we all thought there was no way we would complete the race. The JFR team was looking for some history as John Force was chasing his historic 1,000th round win. He was sitting at 996 headed into race day. As the day progressed John kept winning rounds and Ashley kept winning rounds. Through many starts and stops the final was set with John squaring off against Ashley. There was so much on the line for both of them with Ashley getting the win and becoming the first female Funny Car winner. A lot of people have questioned the legitimacy of her win considering she was racing her father but I can tell you with 100 percent certainty John wanted to win that race. 

He was racing in his 500th career NHRA event that weekend and was in a position to win his 1,000th round win if he had grabbed one more win light. Wrap your head around the symmetry of that stat. You get your 1,000th round win at your 500th race. That would be a 500-race streak of on average a semifinal finish. That is beyond unheard of. John Force loves his history and his stats so there is no way he was going to miss that chance and in fact I think he was so focused on beating Ashley that is why he lost. Too much aggression was the problem, not a generous spirit.

Ironically, on that Sunday morning I was a part of a meeting with the JFR marketing and PR team where we discusses making a plan to handle Ashley’s first win. She had been running well to start the season and we all knew that win was around the corner we just didn’t realize that corner was about nine hours away from our meeting time. 

Winner’s circles are always chaotic but we took it to a new level the night Ashley won. We were trying to get her on the phone with reporters in Los Angeles as well a number of other national publications. It was very late on the East Coast so there were deadline issues and as the post-race action progressed Ashley was doing photos for the NHRA, or a sponsor, or I was stepping in to hand her a cell phone with a reporter on the other end of the line asking her what the win meant. Ashley likes structure and schedules and this was the exact opposite of that. At one point I lost my temper with an NHRA marketing rep who wanted to shoot more staged photos while I was trying to get Ashley to talk with an ESPN writer. I told him his “photos can wait but the media can’t” in no uncertain terms on a night of this historic significance. I later went back and apologized for my outburst.

Ashley is not like her dad, but she could be hilarious. “Did you just pull a piece of chicken out of your pants?” Greatest line ever by a Funny Car driver. Only slightly better than “How is your hand?” after the “Great Atlanta Dragway Ceiling Fan Disaster” PR legend Dave Densmore shares the stage with us.

After all the winner’s circle pomp and circumstance I took Ashley into the pressroom for some more interviews with the media at the race. The Atlanta Dragway press room is very small and there was a good media turnout for this race. Ashley was basically surrounded by media with her back to the wall of the room. I thought this would make a cool photo so I raised my digital camera above my head to get an overhead shot of sorts. As I was stretching out I stuck my hand right between the blades of the high speed ceiling fan. There was a loud thump and a painful yelp from me but the only person who actually saw this calamity was Ashley, since everyone’s focus was on her and she was the lone person looking at the media gaggle. She did her best to not laugh and she was holding it together pretty well. When I could tell she was about to lose it I wrapped up the questions. As we were leaving the pressroom she asked me how I was doing. I assumed she meant how I was doing with regards to dealing with the frantic pace of the post-race. I told her I was sorry everything was so scattered and chaotic. She replied, “Not that. How is your hand? It looked like that fan hit it pretty hard.” We both cracked up for about five minutes thinking about the absurdity of that situation. 

Two years later I was right in the thick of more history as Ashley was competing against her JFR teammate Robert Hight for the 2009 Funny Car world championship. They were neck and neck heading into the second Las Vegas national event.  In a cruel twist of fate Ashley had a poor effort in qualifying and faced Hight in the first round. She came up on the wrong side of that match-up and Hight went on to win the race, essentially locking up his first Funny Car championship. Ashley’s runner-up finish for the championship is still the highest finish for a female in the class.

Following in Ashley’s footsteps Courtney Force took the Funny Car class by storm in 2012. She immediately etched her name in the record books when she won the Seattle national event and shared the winner’s circle stage with Pro Stock winner Erica Enders. It marked the first time two women had won pro categories at the same NHRA national event. Two years later Courtney earned the landmark 100th victory for females in the NHRA Camping World Series (then the Mello Yello Series).

JFR goes Top Fuel racing with Brittany Force

In one of my last seasons with the team it was Brittany Force coming on the scene in Top Fuel which was a new adventure for JFR. We were Funny Car people and Brittany’s career in Top Fuel got off to a rocky start. At the Winternationals Brittany and I were talking in the pits on Sunday morning when we both realized we were late for driver introductions. We were so used to the Funny Car timing we just weren’t paying attention. We hustled up to the starting line only to be met with all her fellow Top Fuel competitors heading back to the pits. We took some good natured rookie ribbing as we sheepishly turned around and waited to hear from the NHRA marketing department for missing driver intros. They were understanding and a bit bemused that they had to come and “remind” us of the schedule. We never missed another Sunday morning pre-race ceremony.

The 2016 season was highlighted by two notable historical moments. Early in the season both Courtney and Brittany were off to strong starts and as they left the Houston national event they were both in the point lead in their respective classes of Funny Car and Top Fuel. It was the first time two females led the point standings simultaneously in the top Nitro categories. A few weeks later Brittany became the first female to win a Four-Wide National event when she took the win at zMAX Dragway in Charlotte. 

Great drivers in their own rights. Fearless and cold-blooded on the track.

That trio of Force women took full advantage of the opportunities provided to them but they always remembered the women that had opened so many doors. I was constantly impressed with their understanding and deference to the woman who didn’t have the easiest path to pursue their dreams. Being the first is never the easiest in a lot of instances but for women like Sarah Fuller or the Forces, they understand the significance and impact of their efforts. They are just opening more doors for players or drivers coming up behind them and that is a pretty cool position.