Even his own daughters Ashley and Courtney have given him fits on the dragstrip, lining up next to him on race day. But John Force, the NHRA’s most victorious Funny Car driver, has had wave after wave of worthy and colorful opponents. Here is a look back, in no particular order, at some of the 16-time champion’s most memorable opponents throughout his 40-plus years in the class that’s concluding its 50th birthday celebration in 2016.

DON “THE SNAKE” PRUDHOMME

The King of Cool, the Sultan of Suave, and the Funny Car Commander in Chief in the 1970s and ‘80s, Prudhomme was a thorn in Force’s side.

“Prudhomme spanked me every week and drove me nuts,” Force said. “Prudhomme was an all-out racer, so I tried to take that to the starting line on race day. He whupped me. He taught me how to fight.”

Force said he learned from NASCAR stars Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt by observing them, and the same went for Prudhomme. “I was like, ‘I can beat this guy! – but I don’t know the game.’ ” Then, after studying Prudhomme and why he won so often, Force had an epiphany: “The game was money. The game was crew chiefs. The game was going rounds so you could learn how to win. He had that magic.”

And he always has loved to needle Force.

Said the 16-time champion, “When I started out, I’d chase Snake and Goose [Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen] around America, and they didn’t even notice me. Back then, Snake would say to me, ‘Who are you again?’ I saw him last month and he said the same thing.”

 

CRUZ PEDREGON

Force often deserved a break from Cruz Pedregon and his Joe Gibbs-owned, McDonald’s-sponsored car in 1992. That’s the year Pedregon interrupted Force’s first 12 championships. “I called it the Hamburger Stand From Hell,” Force said of that car.

Obsessively calculating the points scenarios late in the season during the drive to the Seattle race with his wife and daughters, Force stopped at McDonald’s and bought the girls Happy Meals for lunch. When he realized the Happy Meal treat was a tiny, plastic Cruz Pedregon Funny Car, he screeched the car to a halt on the side of the highway, seized the toys from the back seat, leaped from the car, threw the toys to the pavement, and stomped on them, pulverized them. Suddenly he looked up and saw the horrified looks of his daughters and the look of disgust from his wife and apologized. “I was in Vietnam in my head,” he said.  

But Force was far ahead of Pedregon that year with five events remaining and the team decided to shift more to test mode the following season. “He would have to win five in a row, and I would have to go out in the first round [every time]. And that is exactly what happened. We didn’t quit working, but we got lost. And we couldn’t do nothin’.”  

Pedregon, he said, earned his respect because “he could drive the truck He could tune. He could promote. He could fist-fight in the parking lot. I really had a lot of respect for him. He came from a  racing family.”

 

CHUCK ETCHELLS

From the day he rolled to the starting line with a black “Future Force”-labeled Chevy Monza, Chuck Etchells had John Force – “Brute Force” – on the defensive.

“I never took him for granted. He proved he could win. He was fighting for the win. He was fighting for round money. He knew that win could cover bills,” Force said. “He ran his own business, so he had to pull double duty, even drive the truck. Without a doubt, he lived it. He loved it.

“He was a guy who’d tell you right to your face, ‘John, I love you, but you’re really being stupid today.’ I appreciate a man who would tell you.  He wouldn’t care if he insulted you. He reminded me of Trump.”

Etchells had a printing company and Force told him he’d sell him the rights to his likeness if he wanted to make some John Force wallpaper. He said he’s even buy some of that. Al Hofmann ruined the moment by interjecting, “No – he’s actually putting you on toilet paper.”

 

AL HOFMANN

“It was always an insult from Hofmann. Never said a nice thing to me in his life,” Force said. “Hofmann was mean, but it was his style to never let you think he was weak. Print that: He never let you think he was weak. Ever. That’s the way he was built.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. The flinty Florida privateer constantly taunted Force, calling him “a dumb truck driver,” saying he wished he could have met Force’s mom “so I could talk her out of having him,” and barking, “Force cheats” or “I think he’s an idiot” or accusing him of amassing “cubic dollars” to undercut the competition. When Hofmann crashed hard at Gainesville and wound up in the hospital, Force visited him, then sent his team bus (with driver Eric Medlen) to bring Hofmann from the hospital to his home at nearby Umatilla, Fla., which infuriated Hofmann. He called Force’s gesture a publicity stunt.  

Bill Stephens described Hofmann as having “the physique of a forklift capped with [a] swirling dollop of hair, combed into a defiant pompadour straight from a '50s hot-rod movie.”

And Hofmann was a rebel without a pause when it came to making Force miserable.

“He beat on me verbally, but I watched him race from the heart,” Force said, still shaking his head at Hofmann’s barbs about Force’s race car paint schemes: “I’ve got Elvis on the hood of my Funny Car and Hofmann walked by and said, ‘You’re so ugly they had to paint someone else on your car.’ Later on, I had Frankenstein on the car, and he said in passing, ‘They finally put your picture on the hood.’ ” Hofmann even kicked the side of Force’s car on the return road after a pass.

Another time, Hofmann accused Force of wearing some illegal traction-control device performance-enhancing device, prompting Force to take off his firesuit on TV to prove his innocence. He said, “Buddy, when you see a guy like me with his Budweiser abs, it ain't a pretty sight, OK? Sitting there in my underwear, ol' skinny legs . . . my wife cried, said she couldn't go to church for months. But there was no device on me. We were just good, and we're still good to this day."

One October, at the Houston event, Force and Hofmann thought it might be fun to dress up as each other for Halloween. Force wore Hofmann’s firesuit, but Hofmann protested on national TV of Force’s, “I’m not wearing that filthy thing.” Force shot back, “At least mine ain’t haunted.”

Force said, “Al Hofmann used to ride my back continually, and it was a full-blown aggravation that I lived with, and yet I had a lot of respect for the man.”

After he retired, Hofmann phoned Robert Hight periodically and shared with him that he was cheering for Force when he watched the TV broadcasts. But Force never got over his genuine dread of Hofmann: “He keeps inviting me down there to Florida to go fishin’ with him. He’ll cut me up and use me for gator bait.”  

 

WHIT BAZEMORE

Force first noticed Bazemore when the former drag-racing photographer was living hand-to-mouth, racing on a frayed shoestring, and banging on his own equipment in the far reaches of the pits at Gainesville, Fla. “He never said much, Bazemore, this kid coming up. I figured, ‘You’ve got to hand it to him – he’s like us,’ ” Force said.

Maybe he was – and that drive is what helped him agitate Force in the late 1990s and early 2000s.     

“Bazemore wasn’t mean, wasn’t vicious. It was just outside of him that he would never, ever say, ‘Good job.’  That’s just the way Baze was. He believed in himself that he was the best and that he was really good.

Bazemore and [crew chief Lee] Beard, they were very talented,” Force said, still marveling that they behaved as if to say, “I’m the best, and if you beat me I’m still the best. That was never my style. I was always like, ‘Oh, God, if I run my mouth, sure as I do, I’ll get in trouble.’ But those guys, they believed in themselves. And you can’t say they were cocky. No, they just believed it. They had to make you believe that they believed, that they had no fear.”   

 

ED “THE ACE” McCULLOCH

Force said Ed “The Ace” McCulloch “was a fighter. If you messed with him, he’d beat you up.”

McCulloch certainly bullied Force on the racetrack, until one day in Canada.

Force started his career setting records no racer wanted. He had been to nine final rounds without a trophy to show for it (an NHRA record until Bob Vandergriff came along in Top Fuel and ran it to 13). He rolled up to the starting line for the final round at Montreal in 1987, against McCulloch and said, “I’ll just go up there and take my whippin’.”

But he trumped “The Ace” for that first victory nearly 30 years ago, and his days of living in brother Walker’s driveway inside his Funny Car and existing on one hard-boiled egg for dinner soon became a faded memory.

Three seasons later, Force vanquished McCulloch to earn his first title, in a campaign that saw McCulloch win five times in nine final rounds.

 

DEL WORSHAM

Years ago, on an airplane, John Force sat next to a young woman who told him about her husband’s dreams. That woman is Connie Worsham, wife of Del Worsham, who worked for 20 years to achieve his goal of a Funny Car championship. Force was touched by Connie Worsham’s conversation, and said, “I would trade all my dreams to have his youth. I'd give him all the trophies and start all over, because it was the journey that it was about.” Then he said, “But that means I'd have to give up my dream. All [he’s] got to do is get around me."

Worsham did, this past year. And Force said he never would have guessed that would happen from the teenager he saw hanging out with his racer dad at the dragstrip.

“He sat on my tailgate at Orange County. I never thought he’d drive,” Force said. “This kid starts racing, and I thought, ‘This kid knows everything about a race car. He can build a chassis. He can build a car. He can tune it. He can drive it. And he’s 18-19 years old.’ Now he’s the champion, and he’s kicking our asses out here.”

 

MATT HAGAN

Force is used to rivals, and relentless ones at that. But two-time champion Matt Hagan, a Virginia cattle farmer, posed a whole new threat.

“I’m a big-mouthed guy. He’s not. He’s very quiet,” Force said. “You got to watch that guy that’s quiet, because while you’re talking, he’s thinking.” So he has had to develop a different strategy than any other he has followed in the past.

“I can’t go out and arm-wrestle with Hagan. I can’t get in a fistfight with Hagan. And you don’t intimidate a cowboy,” Force said during their 2010 battle. So Force, as he has done all along in his career, he studied Hagan to see what makes him tick. Still, he has found it difficult to dislike Hagan.

“We all know Hagan has turned into a bodybuilder. He’s beautiful. I work out hard, and I’m not even close,” he said. “Damn, I like that kid. I ought to kiss him.”

The respect is mutual, and that has thrown Force off.