Austin Prock said in his first year of driving the John Force Funny Car that this breed of race vehicle was as close to being a sprint car on the drag strip. The 1994 USAC sprint car champion and former Top Fuel titleist Doug Kalitta couldn’t agree more with Prock.
What might be one of the best-kept secrets in drag racing is that Kalitta has driven a Funny Car and even reached a final round in competition when he drove his cousin Scott Kalitta’s entry.
Kalitta is definitely a dragster guy, but Funny Cars certainly tickle his fancy.
“Funny Cars are definitely the coolest car out here, in my opinion,” Kalitta said. “I’ve only had the opportunity to drive it a few times, but just having the body and the shorter wheelbase … the shorter wheelbase is a big deal, especially with the headers and dropping the cylinder, and because of the length of the header on that thing. You drop a hole, I mean, that thing is just steering you all over the place. And again, I don’t have a lot of experience in driving Funny Cars, but the time that I drove, which has been a while ago, you know, was a lot of fun.”
Kalitta did actually drive a Funny Car in competition, scoring a runner-up finish to Gary Densham at the 2006 IHRA Suzuki Motor City Nationals in Milan, Michigan. Densham ran a 5.017-second quarter-mile at 300 mph to top Kalitta’s tire-shaking 5.71.
“That was an interesting story,” Kalitta explained. “Scott, I don’t think he wanted me to drive his car. Because he ended up going on a vacation for the first time, where he had scheduled some vacation, and Connie was like, ‘We want to take the car out.’
“And he canceled his vacation and drove it that weekend. Then he rescheduled. And I don’t know if Connie and him had something going on, but he scheduled another vacation; same thing. Connie wants to run the Funny Car. Scott couldn’t get out of it with his family on the second go-around, so I finally got an opportunity to drive that thing.
“Scott loved driving Funny Cars. I mean, you can just look at him and see that he’s like a hardcore Funny Car driver. But he was incredible in that thing. I was fortunate to be able to drive his car.”
Would Kalitta like to drive a Funny Car again?
“I wouldn’t turn it down,” Kalitta said. “I guess it’d be kind of fun to try again. These cars now are going a hell of a lot quicker than when I drove one. Austin Prock, he’s made it look easy, and a lot of these guys that drive these things are doing a hell of a job driving them, because in comparison to driving a dragster, it’s definitely a little more of a handful.”
