John Force wasn’t allowed in the room, wasn’t even invited. More precisely, he was specifically not invited.

In a previous visit with Monster Energy marketing point man Mitch Covington and his boss, Force excused himself from the discussion and instructed his two youngest daughters and the Monster representatives to lock the door behind him. He said that would prevent him from barging back into the room and dominating the conversation.

It certainly amused Covington (who did say, “John has a slight tendency to do all the talking”) and Sam Pontrelli, Monster’s senior vice-president of marketing.

“We were rolling on the floor, laughing,” Covington said of their three-plus-hour meeting at Yorba Linda, Calif. He said Force is “a super guy” and a “sweet guy” and said he “laughs 24/7.”

But as well as Force’s storytelling has served him in the past, as much as his deal-closing skills have helped him build a drag-racing empire, he found out they can’t always weave magic. Sometimes other people can be more effective just by being low-key and genuine.

John Force had approached the Monster Energy marketing executives before and come up empty-handed. That didn’t stop daughters Brittany and Courtney Force from forging a deal themselves, one that secured the elusive full-season funding for Brittany’s dragster and benefitted the rest of the four-car John Force Racing team.  

“[Covington] said, ‘Force is always pitching, always wanting big money, always saying he’s the best,’ ” the 16-time NHRA Funny Car champion said. In his voice was a hint of annoyance, not so much jealousy but maybe rather an uneasy feeling that his reliable entertainment shtick wasn’t enough these days, that it smacked of a worn approach.

It might have hurt his feelings a little when he learned that Covington told Brittany and Courtney Force, “If you want to come pitch us, come without Pops.” Force said, “He made it clear: Don’t bring your dad in here.” But John Force chose not to pout about it but instead to find a useful message in it.

“I learned a lesson from that – and I’m a pretty good salesman,” he said. “But we’re in a different economy. Money ain’t falling out of the sky, and it ain’t hanging on trees.  . . . My girls went in there of their own approach. Never talked money. Talked about how they want to win someday, to be champions. It was that that sold the bosses at Monster Energy. They said, ‘We like the attitude.’ ”

His pride was bruised a bit when he learned his advice and warnings to his daughters didn’t hold water. He had told them not to expect success with their first attempt, especially with Monster. With his own proposal, he said, “They were very polite, very gracious. And I left. Didn’t get the call I wanted from them, but I moved on.”

Covington, actually giggling as he recounted the story, said it went like this:

“As soon as [the Force women] walked out of the office, my phone was ringing. It was John: ‘How’d my little girls do? How’d my little girls do?’ I said, ‘Man, your little girls killed it. We’re going to do some business, man.’ He said, ‘Really? I told ‘em you’d kick ‘em out.’ ”

Daughters 1, Dad 0.

But Force said he isn’t keeping score.

“Am I proud of them? You bet,” he said. “I’ve already gifted this company over to my family – to Robert, my oldest daughter Adria, my [other] girls. They basically own the majority of it. I did that about four or five years ago. We’re looking at the future.”

Besides, he said, he has to consider a variety of angles in the course of conducting his business.

“I have to wear three hats. One, as a father. You worry sick about them getting hurt. Two, as a driver. You want to beat them because you want to win. Three, as an owner. You want any of your teams to win,” John Force said.

He should take heart in Covington’s explanation of why Force’s pitch yielded nothing and two years later Brittany’s and Courtney’s succeeded. Timing played a large part. And though he admittedly likes to tease John Force about his eccentric style, Covington said, “We actually do like John representing the [Monster] brand, because he’s such a legend in the sport. I went to a race to check it out. The crowd was eating their hot dogs, eating nachos, pretty laid back. But all of a sudden, they announced a guy named John Force was coming to the line. They all stopped what they were doing to stand up and go to screaming, ‘John Force!’ So we were drawn to John Force all along.”

He said of Force, “He lives and breathes racing 24 hours a day, I can tell.” When the two first met, at Pomona, Force learned Covington’s role at Monster Energy and ushered him to the starting line for the ultimate sensory experience. “Man, he talked nonstop,” Covington said. “He had to stop to get in his car and go race. I said, ‘This guy’s hilarious.’ He pitches 24/7, no question about it. I thoroughly enjoyed his pitch.”  

But the timing simply wasn’t optimum.

“When we talked with John initially,” Covington said, “he had a lot of other sponsors and he didn’t really have a good, clean place to put our logo. We could have shoved it in there somewhere, but he didn’t have a good place. When we opened negotiations back up this year with the girls, that wasn’t the case. He had some really good real estate to sell. That was really important, because we want our car to look a certain way. Brittany’s car afforded us to do that.”

So it wasn’t Force’s over-the-top manner. Covington said, “John’s a bull in a china shop, but that’s what makes John Force John Force, what makes him who he is. We embrace that.

To prove the point – and poke a little fun at Force, too – Covington said he plans to have Force speak at Monster Energy company functions.

“We’re going to get a big hook, a vaudeville hook,” Covington said. “We’re going to tie a rope around his waist. When he gets about 30 minutes over his allotted time – and there’s no way we can expect him to stay in any allotted time – we’re going to get the biggest guy we’ve got and have him jerk on that rope.”

He laughed like a junior-high-school boy plotting a harmless practical joke on a buddy.

Force already might have gotten his chain yanked. But the Monster saga was more of a case of “Brittany is a good fit for our business situation,” in Covington’s words, rather than “John Force isn’t an ideal match for Monster.”

Covington said Brittany Force’s suitability “became obvious” when they were seated next to one another at a wedding-related dinner.

“She was committed to winning. She was dead-serious about drag racing. I sat by her at dinner, and she wasn’t talking about ‘girl stuff.’ She was talking about racing: how she wanted to win, how she loves her dragster.

“I realize that she could have been pitching me,” he said, “but at the same time, she went about it in a very professional way. She speaks well. She’s a cute girl. There’s not much to not like about the situation with Brittany.”

Brittany Force is happy for the support but more importantly, she said she liked promoting a product she believes in.

“Their lifestyle matches right up to the lifestyle of a drag racer,” he said. “It's an extreme sport.  It just goes hand‑in‑hand.  It really seems to work out.

“More than anything it's funny, because, I mean, since I started competing out here in the Top Fuel car in the professional ranks, my guys since day one have stocked their coolers with Monster.  We've always had it in our pits. It's something we've loved. It's just what we drink. We got pretty lucky to be teamed up with Monster.”

And “Pops” is, too.

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