John Force snapped a nearly two-year drought on Saturday, winning the postponed finals of the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Lucas Oil Winternationals at Chandler, Arizona.
Force also had to wait two weeks between the semifinals and the finals of the Winternationals, which was postponed by rain two weeks ago at Pomona, Calif. This time, weather was not an issue as Force raced to his NHRA-record 156th win.
This time out, he beat four-time and defending NHRA Funny Car champion Matt Hagan. Force threw down a run of 4.033 seconds at 318.24 mph. Hagan went 4.048, 283.61.
Force’s last win came on May 1, 2022, at a 4-wide event in Charlotte.
“Right now, I’m alive,” sad Force, driver of the PEAK Antifreeze & Coolant Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car. “I was going to quit this morning and walk out the gate. And now I’ve changed my mind. I told Prock (young teammate Austin Prock), ‘John don’t quit.’”
The seemingly ageless Force turns 75 on May 4. While he refuses to talk much about retirement, Force knows the wins have been hard to come by the past few years.
“I better take it now,” Force said. “I just realized I’m going to be 75 in another month, May 4, and I’m doing some serious thinking where I’m going. But my mood’s changing right now.”
In other Saturday finals from the rain-delayed Winternationals, Justin Ashley defeated Tony Schumacher in Top Fuel, and Dallas Glenn topped Erica Enders for the Pro Stock win. The win for Ashley was his 12th career NHRA event win, and for Glenn, his ninth.
Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011. He won several Michigan Associated Press and national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for auto racing coverage and was named the 2000 Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club’s Michigan Motorsports Writer of the Year. A Michigan native, Mike spent three years after college working in southwest Florida before realizing that the land of Disney and endless summer was no match for the challenge of freezing rain, potholes and long, cold winters in the Motor City.
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