John Force stepped in dog poop.

The drag-racing icon has become gardener at his Yorba Linda, Calif., home. In the valley of his sullenness about the uncertainties of his business and life recently, he turned to pruning rose bushes and was surprising himself by making decent progress.

And then he made his misstep.

As Force kicked off his soiled sandals, he accidentally planted his foot on a thorny stem. After he finished screaming, Force said he wondered if things could get any worse: “Are you kidding me?! I’m out here, pruning flowers. I had trimmed it, and I was cutting the vines in half to put them in this bucket. I turned around, and I had cut off a limb, and it was on the ground. And I stepped on it, and about seven thorns went into my foot. And I mean, I screamed. It was the most painful thing. I stepped right down on it.”

Remembering his vow to stay positive during this hiatus in racing, Force asked himself, “What did you learn?” His answer to himself was that “I learned that even stepping in s--- wasn’t so bad. I said, ‘What could get worse?!’ Then I stepped on that [thorny limb], and well, buddy, things got worse.

“I said, ‘God, I’m sorry – I’ll shut my mouth, because the next thing an airplane’s going to fall out of the sky on me.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry I’m complaining. I should be happy out here in the sunshine and I’m not sick and I’m cutting the roses.’”

Furthermore, his wife, Laurie, suggested he cut some of the roses and bring them inside. “She put them in some water and made a display that I paid nothing for,” he said. “If I had gone and bought those roses, it would have cost me $50. The roses taught John Force something. Can you believe that?”

John Force is counting his blessings these days, but he also is counting his money – because he has employees and bills he must take care of. A pandemic has no compassion. It’s no respecter of human beings or their finances. “My overhead still goes on,” he said.

“What I’m learning is I can take my personal money and take my sponsors’ money and make it work and go from there. And that’s what I did,” he said.

“But I had to cut across the board. I cut crew chiefs’ wages. I cut help’s wages. I cut the machine shop’s and chassis shop’s wages,” Force said.

The John Force Racing machine shop and chassis shop that are part of the Brownsburg, Ind., facility remain staffed and have picked up some non-NHRA machining jobs to start a decent, steady revenue stream. But other key components of the trackside operation have been decimated.

“Hospitality, I laid ’em all off, like eight people,” Force said. “Right now there’s nothing for them to do. And I don’t know – If we can’t have crowds, are we bringing hospitality back? So I had to let ’em go. A lot of them will come back. Some of them won’t.”  

He said, “I don’t have full crews – I ain’t trying to kid nobody. Crew chiefs are all there. Back-up crew chiefs are there. Car chiefs are there. Whether they’re working or not, they’re still getting paid. They worked out a deal with me to make it. Some guys chose not to come back [for financial reasons].”

He said some of his mechanics told him the laid-off workers were better off financially because of their unemployment checks. “So,” Force told them, “if you want to be laid off, I’ll lay off some more people.” He quickly stressed, “I do it all by the book. I can afford to lay some people off. I didn’t right away. I went a month or two months and laid a few more off. Not a few – I’ve got a pretty good group laid off. But I can go racing tomorrow with four teams ready to go.

“And I ain’t saying that so the sponsors will know. They already know, because they already wanted to know, ‘What crew chiefs you got? What truck drivers you got?’”   

Not every team has a full crew – “One team we might have kept three, and we might have kept none on another team. But I can start up tomorrow, because these people are saying they’re coming back,” Force said.

 

 

 

The NHRA is expected Thursday afternoon to announce an ambitious back-to-racing plan that would start at Seattle in the last few days of July and first of August. But another re-entry plan has been on the table, one that involves hosting two or more events at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis in July. It’s unclear whether or how much any July races at Indianapolis would alter a proposed slate of 16 consecutive races from August through mid-November. At least until Thursday’s announcement, Force and everyone else are in limbo.

“One of the statements I made is that I’m not going to vote that I’m going to run 16 races. If my sponsors pay, I will. But if you have a race or two that’s right there in Indy and I don’t have to travel and spend money, I’ll be there. But all of this is based on what sponsors do and how much money I got that I can spend myself. And the sponsors only got so much money. I’m ready to go racing tomorrow. My rigs are loaded. I got everything but nitro, and it’ll be at the races. But we got big problems – if we can’t have crowds, we ain’t going to race. It’s that simple.”   

Force said, “We could wake up tomorrow and there’s a miracle cure and it would be business as usual. But if this thing [coronavirus] hangs around a while or gets worse, then [the season is] going to be put off until next year. And we may have to move everything to next year. But I don’t make that call.”

Until he’s back on a dragstrip somewhere, Force naturally is anxious about what will happen in the next month or two. He’s 71 years old, going for a 17th championship, and surely is hoping he’ll be able to keep afloat his race team – which includes Robert Hight, his Funny Car teammate and John Force Racing president, and Top Fuel drivers Brittany Force (his daughter) and Austin Prock.

“Sponsors, you can’t expect ’em to go on paying with no racin’. So I’m going to carry this thing myself. I put away money for what I call a rainy day. I had years of making profit, building buildings, buying land, selling land. I made a lot of money with my six corporations. In the middle of it, I put away for a rainy day. And now I’m spending that money back,” Force said. “It comes right out of my savings, and it’s gone. There’s only so far I can go. I ain’t going to spend until I’m broke at my age. I set up a program that we can recover, even if it goes to Pomona of next year.”

So if necessary, he can stay in business with all four teams until the 2021 season-opening Winternationals at Pomona, Calif.

However, his corporate attorney told him, “You’re insane. Shut it down quick.” But Force said he can’t: “What if [the sport] comes back? I lose all my sponsors. I’ve got to honor those contracts until they tell me they quit. And they haven’t yet. Nobody has quit me. A lot of checks have stopped coming, saying, ‘If we ain’t racing, why are we paying?’ I’m having to work with all of them. And I’m having to use my own money. So that’s what I’ve got to do. I can only do it for awhile. So I set a budget with the people.”

He debunked a rumor that a major sponsor or two might leave. “No, they’re not, and I don’t know who would say that. They don’t want to quit. They have contracts with us. If we miss races, we’ve got to make them up or make some deductions. They have not told us they quit. Have we talked to all the sponsors about where we’re going? Haven’t even talked to all of them. I only have seven majors. We told ’em we don’t know, that we’re watching what everybody else is watching – and what’s coming next?  

“I know that I can’t race without money, and I’ve got to find money. I’ve got some of mine that’ll carry me for a while – but how long?” Force said. “So it’s a matter of why go on down a road when it ain’t going to get well? I’m going to go down a road and see if it gets better. If it gets better, then I’m going to keep payin’ to get to the next crossroad. But if it gets worse and the sickness [persists], well, then I’m like everybody else: I might have to shut it down.

“This could bankrupt John Force Racing,” he said. “It ain’t happened in 40 years. I’ve seen it all, but I ain’t never seen anything like this.”

No one has. And the NHRA has tried to gather all the information it can about how to return to competition so no one has to shutter a race shop. It knows if a multicar team such as John Force Racing can suffer economic hardship, the much smaller-budgeted teams certainly are in jeopardy. And Force said he recognizes how difficult it is for the NHRA to proceed when the situation still is liquid. 

“Everybody in the PRO [Professional Racers Organization] meetings, the NHRA – everybody’s trying to help. They’ve got ideas. PRO’s got ideas. The only thing I said is, ‘None of you are wrong. I love all of you. But everyone has a different agenda. You say, ‘We need to do this,’ but can everybody do that? And if we don’t have everybody, how do we do it? I don’t have an answer,” he said. “And I’ve been able to find an answer for everything. I always found a dream to motivate me to go down a road.”

 

 

 

 

Force described the situation as doors continually opening and closing and repeating the pattern, adding that “There’s more doors closing than doors opening.”

But while he has found his schedule heavily curtailed by orders of California Governor Gavin Newsom, Force has found inspiration from one of Newsom’s predecessors: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Thanks to a speech that Schwarzenegger delivered online to 2020 graduates, Force is re-energized and in defiant mode.

“I can tell you one thing. I live in a world of unknown. Doors are opening and closing, like revolving doors. But I know one thing: I will not give up,” Force said. “I will stand my ground with whoever will stand with me, and I’m going to do my best to keep it going. I may have to make changes. I may have to lay more people off. But I’m going to stand my ground. John Force Racing is going to be standing here if this thing comes back. And if it don’t come back, it don’t matter if I’m standing here or not.”

He said he feels he’s heading in the right direction, thanks to Schwarzenegger’s encouragement.

“A disaster can change who you are. It can steal jobs and force you inside. But it is who you are that rises in the face of adversity,” Schwarzenegger said. The highly successful actor-politician-former Mr. Universe emphasized the words of former Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius: “What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Schwarzenegger said, “Life will be always about obstacles in front of you. So when you know your vision, every setback, every stepping stone, every struggle, all resistance builds your inner strength, builds your character, makes you stronger as a person.”

Force’s takeaway was that “you’ve got to look at where you want to be.” He said, “It just woke me up to what he said. Pick the road to where you want to be. When you look at that road, it looks impossible.  What you do is go one obstacle at a time. If you knock out that obstacle, sooner or later you’ll get to where you want to be. Pick the road where you want to be, and if it’s got obstacles, then take ’em one obstacle at a time. And that’s what I’m doing with John Force Racing.

“So I’m looking at the obstacles. What are the obstacles? Keep your team ready to go. If the sponsors all quit, you keep your money and try to keep all your leads in every department. If you can’t afford that, keep tryin’. Keep breaking down the obstacles until you get through ’em and you’ll get to where you want to be. We all know I’ve been here my whole life. Racing’s where I want to be. Don’t lose your direction. Don’t lose your goal.”

Longtime public-relations specialist Dave Densmore – a genuine friend Force said has known him since he was “rollin’ cars over and being on fire and being broke” - helped pull the racer from his blues. 

“About a week ago, I got really stupid, like, ‘This ain’t makin’ no sense.’ Everything became a negative, and I ain’t going to do that. I’m going to find a way,” Force said.

He said he told Densmore, “I’ll figure out a way to make this work, somehow. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m in trouble. I may have to shut it off now.”

And he said Densmore told him, “Force, I know you’re screwed up, and I don’t care if you’re broke. I’m going to be here for you. You’re my friend.” That touched his sentimental heart, and he said, “There’s another door that opened, when I’ve got 10 other doors just like it that closed.”

Hight witnessed the turnaround in Force’s demeanor and asked him how much Monster Energy he had been drinking.

“I got a whole new attitude,” Force told him. “I’m going to be positive. I’m going to follow Arnold’s lead,” Force said. “If I’m going to lead, even if Robert leads my company, I need to set an example and not come into the boardroom with a s----y attitude. So thank you, Arnold Schwartzenegger.”

Obstacles remain for John Force Racing and all other NHRA teams, but Force has a plan. And he said, “That ain’t just my love for NHRA or my love for driving the race car or my love for the fans – it’s my love for what I do every day of my life.

“And roses are not my thing.”