They met at a wedding in Mexico, drag-racing sisters Brittany and Courtney Force and Mitch Covington, Monster Energy’s vice-president of sports marketing.

It was a match made in a margarita-infused, personality-plus heaven. And with Monster Energy signing on as full-season primary sponsor for Brittany Force’s Top Fuel dragster, both parties hope to live happily ever after – beyond the initial three-year term of their agreement announced Wednesday.

Beginning at this weekend’s Summit NHRA Southern Nationals, her John Force Racing-owned dragster  – which Covington said looks “pretty damn hot” – will sport the iconic “lifestyle in a can” energy drink logo. That will kick off a promotional honeymoon that the executive said might take the schoolteacher-turned-speedster to Supercross, Moto GP, and maybe even a Formula 1 race.

“We do a lot of cross‑promoting in other sports.  Maybe you’ll see her in some unusual places,” Covington said.

The deal stretches to the three JFR Funny Cars.

“We’ll have some branding on all of John Force Racing,” Covington said, “so we’re not just getting Brittany. We’re getting the whole team:  Robert Hight, Courtney and John.  We’re joining the family – or they’re joining ours.”

Said Brittany Force, “Monster’s all about living life on the edge.  I think our sport ties in perfectly to that, because there’s nothing more extreme than driving a Top Fuel dragster.  You’re racing down the track at 330 miles per hour.  I don’t think there’s anything more extreme than that.  I honestly think we are really a perfect fit.”

Covington agreed, saying, “Monster is all about unleashing the beast, and there is no other beast like a 10,000-horsepower, asphalt-wrinkling, nitro-guzzling dragster. Monster’s marketing is built on three things mainly:  that’s racing, music and girls. We think that fits great with drag racing. We’re just super excited to be back in this sport.”

He was alluding to Kenny Bernstein’s Monster Dodge Charger program in 2007-08 that included Tommy Johnson Jr.

This current marketing partnership represents something much deeper than funding for Brittany Force’s Top Fuel career and another attractive face for Monster’s blended marketing platform of athletics and music for the concert-crazed, party-hardy, extreme-loving young adults. Both sides have bolstered their respective “Next Generation” images.

And for John Force himself, this deal signifies continuity, his daughters’ independence in a world the entire family has depended on for decades. For him, it’s more than the simple relief of having money to continue drag racing, although it is that, too.

“They landed this deal,” he said of Brittany, 29, and Courtney, 27. “That means there’s a future in John Force Racing. It’s not just about winning championships. We know how to do that. But you got to have funding.  I’m no spring chicken – you all know that.  My girls now, along with Robert Hight, they can lead this charge. But to land a company like Monster, that’s huge. It was just a moment as a father, I said, ‘The kids got it done.’

“This is taking a lot of pressure off me.  I can finally go to Atlanta and race and know that thanks to Mitch and his team at Monster that I didn’t fail my daughter. Did not want to fail my kid as an owner and as a father,” John Force said. “He saw a whole future with the next generation, and that’s where Monster Energy’s going. The next generation of fans, NHRA fans, that’s really what it’s all about,” he said.

Force credited his college-educated daughters for their grit and gumption to take on the task of sponsorship procurement, something that even a seasoned veteran and 16-time champion such as himself has found taxing. That has proven to be a source of pride, as well as a pleasant surprise.

“They know budgets.  They went to work and found me some money,” Force said. “They got the combination of looks that I never had, and No. 2, they got the drive. They got an education. Kids need to get an education if you’re going to be in this sport.  She did and so did her sisters.

“I always wanted sons, to be honest. I didn’t think women could drive racecars.  Just us men, it’s our egos, maybe. Shirley Muldowney proved different, and Erica Enders[-Stevens].  My children have shown that,” he said. “They proved to me the Force name, boys or not, the name will go on. To keep them here, we got to have a company, and we got the right company for her. Monster Energy, we thank you and love you for this opportunity.”

It was an overwhelmingly proud moment for John Force, who said he had days when he said of these two youngest daughters, “Maybe you’re not cut out for this.” He said, “I thought, ‘They won’t come back.’ The next morning they’re standing at the track with the helmet in their hand. I couldn’t run them off if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. They showed me through the pain when they’re late on a Christmas tree, they lose a round, when they break a motor . . . [they] come back, they’re wanting to apologize: ‘I know we’re on a budget, dad. I drove it too far.’ “

And that budget is less a concern today than it has been since longtime sponsors Ford and Castrol gave him a 1-2 gut punch in the summer of 2013, declaring they’d be gone after the 2014 season.

“I said once, ‘I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to where John Force Racing used to be. Money was falling out of the sky. With the economy in the last three or four years, it changed. I saw tears in my baby girls’ eyes when I told them, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to make it.  I’m doing my best.  You don’t know that world out there, it will chew you up and spit you out.’  “

His story is different as of Wednesday. “I have enough money now to run my fuel teams, be competitive, run for the championship, and I’ve got the money to build safety,” Force said, adding that he’s “85 or 90” percent funded. “It wasn’t about trying to make a profit.  It was about getting to drive these race cars.”

The entire JFR team benefitted, but Wednesday’s announcement also saw the youngest Force women upstage their father. He had solicited a deal with Monster Energy but couldn’t seal it.

“I got thrown out on my head the first time I went there because I pitch different,” Force said. “The girls went in, and they just talked from the heart. They talked about what they loved.  It wasn’t their old man just talking about money and how great he was.”

Covington said, “John Force is one hell of a salesman. I actually met him at a wedding party. This dude chased me down the whole time. But I got news for everybody.  John Force didn’t sell this deal. It was his daughter Brittany and his other daughter, Courtney.

“When I met Brittany, she really made an impression of her passion for winning. She made no bones about the fact that she was going to win in Top Fuel,” he said. “If Brittany had have said, ‘I’m driving a Funny Car,’ we would have gone to a Funny Car with her, as well. Monster looks for athletes that have a real passion for getting on that top step. Even though they may have had adversity, they’re not winning at the time, any of that kind of thing, but you see that passion, that’s what we want in our fans, that’s what we want on the teams we sponsor, and what we especially want in the drivers and athletes that we sponsor.

“Monster’s brand was built on personalities and athletes, not necessarily teams or sponsoring series or hanging up banners at tracks.  We don’t buy TV commercials.  It’s really built on personalities. We saw something in Brittany that we thought fit our brand.  We know it’s going to be a home run for us.”

Covington said John Force’s pitch had been outstanding but “at that time, there really wasn’t a lot of real estate to do it the way Monster likes to do it with our logo. It was really hard. We liked the Force program. They’re just down the street from us [Monster at Corona, Calif., Force Racing at Yorba Linda].  They understand our brand.  But there really was not a lot there for us.

“I was down in Mexico with Brittany and Courtney at a wedding party. I got to talking to [Brittany] at dinner. I got to sit by her at dinner,” Covington recalled. “I’m like, ‘Oh, no, she’s going to pitch me hard.  John is always pitching me hard.’ John pitches me hard 24 hours a day, and I love the guy. It’s my entertainment almost. OK, I’m going to sit by the daughter.

“She never says anything.  After sitting there for five minutes, maybe a few margaritas in, but I see something here: this girl’s committed to winning. We kind of talked about it throughout the weekend. When I came back home, [I said,] ‘I tell you what, how about you girls coming in pitching the rest of our team here at Monster and leave John at home?’  She said, ‘Oh, boy, this is going to be fun, but we can do that.’  They really won us over when they came in without John. That’s no disrespect to John. We all love John. But his daughters stepped up to the plate and really won us over.”

Brittany Force said, “It all went down a year ago. I met Mitch Covington at a wedding and pushed and pushed for a meeting.  It took a long time until we got it all done. But I remember when we came home and told my dad that we got a meeting set up next Monday: ‘Courtney and I are going in and we’re going to sell this Top Fuel dragster.’ My dad said, ‘I’ve been there, done that. You girls don’t know how it’s done. There’s so much involved.’

“For two days we sat down with my dad in the office at Courtney’s house all day long, taking notes, figuring out how we’re going to sell this,” she said. “We’d never done it before, tried to bring home a sponsor. My dad is the best at that. I was lucky to have his support. We took notes, went in there, and actually didn’t stick to our notes at all. We sat down with Mitch Covington. The meeting just went as it did. We got a call back for another meeting. It’s something very exciting. It’s something I’m very proud of, to know I’ve been involved since the very beginning, both Courtney and I and my dad. This is definitely a huge opportunity.

“Before we went into that meeting, we sat down and he told us where we needed to start, what points we needed to hit, just gave us all the information,” Brittany Force said. “That morning when Courtney and I drove out for that Monster meeting, I was so beyond nervous. I had never been so nervous in my life. Once we got in there and started talking, I kind of relaxed a little bit more. I think they saw both Courtney’s and my personalities come out. I think that’s what made it all happen.”

She said, “Making this announcement, it’s taken a lot of anxiety away, not just for my dad, but myself, my team, all of John Force Racing.  We were all worried about it with all the changes we made in the last year, starting our season with not having a primary sponsor on my car. It is a relief now to know that we’ll be stepping into Atlanta to unleash the beast.”

Covington, though elated to have two attractive females among Monster’s stable of athletes, said, “To be honest, it really wasn’t about picking a certain gender. It was about finding an athlete in NHRA that fits our brand, that’s on a team that’s capable of running at the highest level. We got two girls in this deal, too.  We got Courtney, who does a great job in the Funny Car division, that we consider one of our athletes as well. Then we got Robert and John.

“So really I’d have to say, ‘Hey, I’m glad she’s a girl, because she looks so good in the car and fits the whole image. At the same time, we’re looking for a high‑performing drag racing team. Then from then on we picked it up with John. It’s all good.  But I do like to give John a hard time about that.  She’s a lot better looking than he is, and it’s better to sit in the meetings with the girls than John and Robert.”

The deal is primarily for Brittany Force, but it appears in Mitch Covington, John Force might be the one who has met his match.