This has been a tumultuous season for NHRA Top Fuel star Brittany Force.
Her legendary father has been sidelined since being seriously injured in a June 23 crash in Richmond, Va. After sitting out a race to be by her father’s side, Brittany had to battle to get to compete in the six-race Countdown to the Championship.
But now that she’s in, Force is making some noise – or at least she was at the FallNationals in Ennis, Texas, on Friday night, when she posted a 3.667-second, 338.19-mph blast to grab the provisional No. 1 spot at the Texas Motorplex.
“That was just an amazing run for our team to come out here to Texas. We’ve had a tough year. We’ve been struggling, and to put a 3.66 on the board, 338 mph, we’re very proud of that,” Brittany said. “That’s (crew chief) David Grubnic, that’s this entire HendrickCars.com team and we’ve been pushing all season long. We’ve been trying to do that and just to be able to have a killer run like that. We’re currently sitting No. 1. We get to take home a check and some cowboy boots and really just boost our confidence, the team morale. We’re ready for the rest of this weekend to attack.”
Force, the 2017 and 2022 NHRA Top Fuel champion, has a chance to reach a milestone in her career if she can keep the No. 1 spot through Saturday’s two qualifying sessions. A No. 1 qualifying spot for Sunday’s eliminations would be the 50th of her career.
Force doesn’t plan on letting up at all in the final three races of the season – Dallas, Las Vegas and Pomona, Calif.
“We won’t give up until it’s ended and it’s done, and it comes down to Pomona, the final event. So, we keep on pushing. … Our game plan is to win this event here and we try not to look too far out, get too far ahead of ourselves, but we just focus on, ‘We want to move up that ladder,’” Force said. “We’re currently in the No. 8 position. We want to win. We want to get back in that winner’s circle. It’s been far too long and that’s our ultimate goal right now, is to get back in that winner’s circle and do it this weekend.”
Force’s best run this year is four trips to the semifinals. Her last win was the fall race in Las Vegas in 2022, when she beat Mike Salinas in the final round. Last year she advanced to just one final round, losing in the finals in Topeka, Kan., to Justin Ashley.
“When I head back to my pits right now, I know the guys are going to be pumped. I heard that when they were in the tow car coming down to pick me up, they were screaming in the car. They were patting each other on the back,” Force said. “They were pumped about it, and that’s what we are used to doing. We’ve done that for so many years and we’ve been so successful. … This season, and not have that, and not be able to repeat that like we had in the past, it’s been tough for us, but we kept our confidence up. We’ve kept pushing.
“We all believe in this car, we all believe in each other, and it gets hard weekend after weekend when you get beat. But, still, at the end of the day, we push to be the best that we can, and to do that today, it pumps us up for this weekend and the rest of this season. We’re here in Texas and we have two events after that. And we want to end up in a winner’s circle – that is our ultimate goal – and we’d love to do it here. I’ve been in the winner’s circle here a few times. Love to do it again this year.”
Especially with HendrickCars.com as her primary sponsor.
“I’m very proud to be teamed up with HendrickCars.com. We came into the season, there was a lot of shifts, a lot of changes, and Hendrick stepped in and picked up a handful of races,” she said. “When a sponsor signs on like that and teams up, partners up with all of – not just me as a driver, yes, me as a driver, but all of John Force Racing – we want to make them proud because we want a long-term relationship with them. We want to continue to grow the sponsorship. And Hendrick, it is just a name like Hendrick, to have that on my car is something I’m very proud of. We want to make them proud, and No. 1 is a great way to start, but even better would be in that winner’s circle.”
Force didn’t secure that No. 1 spot with much room to spare. Her 3.667 barely edged out the 3.676 of Missouri’s Shawn Reed, while homestate driver Steve Torrence of Kilgore, Texas, was in third at 3.721.
