JOHN FORCE – Castrol GTX Ford Mustang – YOU’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE AND MUST HAVE A LOT OF FRIENDS IN THE GARAGE. “Yeah, I’m meeting a lot of my buddies. Coming around here just seeing what the big guys do here in NASCAR. Of course, I’m a Ford guy and we drive those Mustangs; we had a big outing last week in Pomona, and it was a good weekend for all us. It’s exciting for me to come to this press party here. It’s a lot of new faces and a lot of old faces that I’ve known for years. As you know, I’ve been around for a long time, so thank you for having me.”
ON HIS DAUGHTER ASHLEY’S DEBUT LAST WEEK AT POMONA. “It’s just an exciting time in our sport. We just unveiled my daughter Ashley in a Ford Mustang and got pretty tense right down in the last day of qualifying at the NHRA POWERade kickoff at Pomona. And, Dad bumped the girl out but the girl bumped right back in. I’m real proud of her, she did a great job. I think the drag-racing market, Shirley Muldowney gave the start, women in drag racing, and really opened the door, and now for the first time in NHRA history, they have four women in all four categories.”
WHAT WAS IT LIKE, COMPETING AGAINST YOUR DAUGHTER? “It was exciting until I bumped her out. If you’ve seen my [TV show] on A&E, ‘Driving Force,’ I’m sleeping on the couch and it didn’t help none when I took my kid out in that first session, last session of qualifying. I got back to the starting line and the wife was a little bit upset. My kid went out there, like the tiger she is, she bounced back in the show, and it was a proud moment for me. When she straps in that seat she’s a tiger, she’s like her old man, and looks a whole lot cuter. She looks like her momma.”
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU GET CAUGHT CHEATING IN NHRA? “You get fined. And the trick is, I guess, if you’re going to cheat, don’t get caught, at least that’s how we look at it down there in drag racing. But, to be honest, I’ve never cheated. And I’ve even asked my crew chief because I’m not a real motor head, I’m just a driver and a promoter and an owner, but I said to my drivers, I’ve got 30 years in this sport, and I’ve got 14 championships, 15 championships overall with one of my other drivers, and I said it’s no time in my career to cheat and I don’t ever want to go down that road, and my boys say okay. But I’ve got to admit, they fudge it. Even Castrol, that we’re sponsored by, ‘is it out there?’ And what I said, ‘What’s out there is we push it to the max.’ We push it. The only twice that I was ever in trouble was I come out of the roof hatch at Richmond and I got hung up on the bolts coming through the roof, so I told my guys, ‘Turn ’em over so I don’t hit ’em going out,’ so they were sticking up. We set the track record that weekend, but we were busted because they said they were vortex generators, that we deliberately turned them upside down to redirect the air, and I said, ‘No way. It was to keep from tearing my fire suit.’ I’ve got a photograph I’ll bring back. It’s kind of fun. I’m going to show it on TV tonight, just so when this issue came up I could dance around it. You’ve got to give benefit to the doubt. I don’t know if anybody was cheating or not, and I’m not going to give an opinion on it, okay? I think these are all great racers, and I just can’t give an opinion because I don’t know. I have this photograph because they said my car, that we were so good, and that’s the problem with being so good that NHRA came down and said, ‘Look, we don’t need this on our sport, that if you’re cheating, if we bust you, we’re going to fine you, take points away from you, throw you out of the race, whatever it takes.’ I said, ‘Well, we’re not.’ I even went to my crew chiefs and asked them and they said no. So, they said that we had an automatic device braking system because my car had magic. The real magic wasn’t me, as a driver, it was Austin Coil [crew chief]. This kid could walk on water and he could make my hot rod go down a dirt road that was unbelievable. And this went on the months. And finally, in the middle of the race, they stripped my car completely, took it apart, and they could find no automatic devices that could make this car slow down, to keep it from smoking the tires. So we made the run and the next day, in the heat of the day, 90 degrees, set the track record and they were screaming, every team. No way could anybody run like this, don’t care if it’s John Force and Austin Coil, and the rumor was I was carrying the automatic device in my fire suit. And here I was standing at the end of the race track and Steve Evans, a great friend of mine that announced at the time, he’s passed away, but he said, ‘John, I hate to ask you this, but you have to prove right now on national TV,’ and we were live, ‘and he said, ‘you have to prove right now that you’re not carrying that device.’ Well, John Force unzipped his fire suit and dropped it to the ground, and buddy, when you see a guy like me with Budweiser ads, it ain’t a pretty sight. Okay? Sitting there in my old dirty underwear, skinny legs – my wife cried, said she couldn’t go to church for months, was hiding – and they took photographs, it was all over the internet, but there was no device on me. We were just good, and we’re still good to this day. We get a lot of technology through Ford, the wind tunnel, we’ve got a new motor program that we’re building with Ford that should be out later in the year. We’re building an NHRA Ford spec motor, we’re excited about that. Dan Davis and John Szymanski from Ford Motor Company have really worked well with us to help us create a program that we can continue to dominate, because that’s what we like to do. It’s real tough racing right now. So, I’ve got that picture, it ain’t pretty but it’s me. If I get beat up tonight on TV I can show that picture and help me dance around the issues out here because I don’t get in the issues. I think the sanctioning body, they do what they have to do. The NHRA makes calls I don’t like; I don’t tell them how to run their series, they don’t tell me how to run my race car, and that’s the way we play the game.”
THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL WOMEN COMPETE IN TOP FUEL, BUT NOT FUNNY CAR. WHY DID YOUR DAUGHTER CHOOSE TO RACE IN FUNNY CAR? “Well, the real truth is, the Funny Car is an animal. You’re talking about 2,400 pounds, short wheelbase, full body with all the aerodynamics, that fact that the motor’s out front. I always felt that I like the motor out front so, since I’m paying for it, if it blows up, I want to see it blow up. It’s a bad joke, but it’s kind of the way I look at it. I’ve found from being in a crash or being on fire, I got more ink in the early days than I did from winning the race, because in the early days I never won a race. My daughter got a taste of that fire at Phoenix and we took her out the next day, and I said, ‘You’re going in and out of rook hatch 30 days per day for the next four days up to the race.’ And I wore her out. I guarantee you know, she can get out of anything. That’s my little baby, and I don’t want to burn her.”
CAN YOU REFLECT ON WINNING 14 CHAMPIONSHIPS – THE SAME AS RICHARD PETTY AND DALE EARNHARDT COMBINED? “I really appreciate and thank you for just mentioning me with those types of individuals because those are guys that I read about, that I dreamed about. I had great sponsors behind me – Mac Tools and Ford Motor Company and Castrol and AAA of Southern California, it goes on and on and on – but I hired the right people. I think the best quality that I had picking good people. I’ve been together with Austin Coil for 22 years. He met Ashley when she was two years old, so he’s helped raise my kids. And Dean Antonelli, the crew chief for that Mustang is a kid that’s worked for me for 14 years that when he met Ashley she was seven years old, been around the shop, snotty-nosed kid with curly hair, you know? They’re really working hard to take care of her. But I’ve been lucky because I get the right people behind me, and I work as a team. I don’t take any of the win money. All the money goes into a pool that pays all four teams. That’s why our teams team up. And I think that’s why we’ve dominated for so many years. I did lose a year ago to a young kid named [Gary] Scelzi in a Dodge, but I bounced right back and got the championship back. I wear this POWERade jacket and people think I’m nuts, when it’s 90 degrees I’m wearing this jacket because I’m very proud of this accomplishment and to carry the colors for my sport.”
HOW DO THINK ASHLEY COMPARES TO YOU AS A DRIVER AT THE SAME AGE? “I told the USA TODAY the other day, took off, because the weather was coming in on Lake Tahoe and I forgot to pull up the anchor and ripped the front of the boat out. It was sinking, and my wife very calmly said to me, ‘Do we bail water or do we swim?’ And I was running from one end of the boat to the other like I was going to cure it from sure pure panic. I have always fought the fight on adrenaline. It’s the old saber-tooth tiger effect, you know, chases the cave man, gets up for the fight? That’s me. Ashley, the skill, because if you know you can drive even with all the championships, there was a lot of luck and a lot of craziness and a lot of beer went down in the early days, and how I survived it I don’t know, but I love what I did. But what I think that Ashley has that I don’t have is her mother’s composure. She doesn’t panic. She has that. And her mother was that way. Ashley has the ability to be better than me, because if you can be cool, that’s better. If I could’ve been I cool, I might’ve won more races. It’s going to take a lot of years. It’s not just going to happen. I don’t believe she’s going to go out and win a championship, but what you see in her eyes, on TV, on ESPN2, no pressure.”
