The phenomenon started with John Force's dream more than 40 years ago, when he fell in love with cars. He spun that into 14 National Hot Rod Association championships and drew his four daughters into the business. Adria, the oldest, is Chief Financial Offer of his empire and is reigning Funny Car champion Robert Hight's wife. Ashley Force Hood competes against her dad and brother-in-law in the Funny Car class. Brittany and Courtney Force drive Top Alcohol Dragsters.
 
Force, Hight, and Force Hood all have qualified for the  Countdown that begins this week with the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis. Force enters as the points leader, Force Hood as last year's winner, and Hight as the driver who squeaked into the Countdown last Labor Day weekend and stormed to the title.
 
They'll battle buddies Bob Tasca and Tim Wilkerson, among others.

The phenomenon started with John Force's dream more than 40 years ago, when he fell in love with cars. He spun that into 14 National Hot Rod Association championships and drew his four daughters into the business. Adria, the oldest, is Chief Financial Offer of his empire and is reigning Funny Car champion Robert Hight's wife. Ashley Force Hood competes against her dad and brother-in-law in the Funny Car class. Brittany and Courtney Force drive Top Alcohol Dragsters.
 
Force, Hight, and Force Hood all have qualified for the  Countdown that begins this week with the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis. Force enters as the points leader, Force Hood as last year's winner, and Hight as the driver who squeaked into the Countdown last Labor Day weekend and stormed to the title.
 
They'll battle buddies Bob Tasca and Tim Wilkerson, among others.
 
"My wife wants her daughter to win," Force said. "My daughter wants her husband to win. And ol' John Force wants to win. Tasca wants to win, and so does Wilkerson."
 
This 56th annual event -- even the Countdown itself -- might already have a winner: the Ford Motor Company.
 
That quintet already makes up half of the 10-driver field eligible to vie for the series championship.
 
"To have five cars out of the 10 cars be Ford Mustangs just shows the depth of the field, the talent of the Ford drivers, and how blessed we are to be affiliated with the best in the world," Jamie Allison, Ford director of North America motorsports, said.
 
"In terms of what is going on this season, one of the reasons we're all here is because of the 'One Ford' approach," Allison said.  "It was an opportunity to come to John [Force] and see if we can reach out to and strengthen all the Ford Funny Car teams -- including up-and-coming driver Bob Tasca and veteran Tim Wilkerson -- by bringing all the teams together under 'One Ford' in terms of where Ford Motor Company extends technical support.
 
"John is a man who's really, really loved and has a lot a passion for Ford, listened to what I had to say, and was able to support to the extent that he can. I'm very pleased and very happy, and I want to give a lot of credit as well to the John Force Racing engineers and also the Ford Racing engineers who've worked with the team on the chassis development, on safety as well as the Ford BOSS 500."
 
Tasca, through the well-established Ford dealerships in Rhode Island and Massachusetts that his grandfather nurtured, has contributed to the automaker's global policies and understands well the direction the company  is headed -- and maybe more importantly, why. Force, too, has Ford's ear -- but with that privilege comes responsibility. He said he knew he had to follow Ford's belt-tightening model and deliver performance worthy of Detroit's attention. He even cited the fear factor, something that has motivated him his entire career.
 
He's proudest, he said, is the notion that five Ford drivers advanced to the Countdown and that "we did it on a budget in a tough economy. It was Ford Motor Company under the leadership of [Alan] Mulally with [Mark] Fields and [Jim] Farley and [Ken] Czubay, the guys that came to us and said, 'No. 1, we're going to race and we're going to win. But we've got to do this on a budget.' Ford wasn't going to take any money from the government. They weren't going to take stimulus money, and we had to look at their example."
 
Force did more than pay lip service to the plan. He downsized. He trimmed. He consolidated. Moreover, he shared, admitting that sharing had been a foreign concept after years of guarding his precious hard-earned data in a sport that's neighborly but wary.
 
"They gave me a year to organize my team to everywhere that I could cut," the 25th Anniversary Castrol GTX Ford Mustang driver said. "I went to that and I went to the team players and we worked together, because it's not good to take a cut and then you still can't deliver. And that was my biggest fear.  We made changes cutting our testing programs, and we had to give up a team in 2010. But we did it the same way Ford did, making tough choices.
 
"I kind of structured it the way Ford Motor Company did, because it was something when a guy like Mr. Fields or Mr. Farley or Mr. Czubay would talk to me, which when they're on top of the food chain to sit with a guy like me and tell me what they're doing and the direction they're headed with Ford," Force said. "If I wanted to work with them, I could be long-range, but I still had to deliver. I worked with them – the changes in budgets, but I was given extensions that moved out four, five years and kept me in the game long range.
 
He said, "At the end of the day, we've got to survive this economy in the next two, three, or four years. And I'm going to be able to do that with the help of Ford and the other sponsors that we worked out similar programs.  What I'm excited most about is, we delivered."
 
He wasn't being boastful, just presenting the evidence.
 
"I'm never going to guarantee a championship, but under the way we work together and that we're all 'One Ford' team, that was most important. This all started taking place at the end of '07 and into '08.  Through that process, working with Jamie Allison and Ford Racing and how we build our budgets, where we could still deliver – the proof is in the pudding.  We haven't won the championship, but we're in the lead.  Robert won the championship in '09, so we knew that we were headed in the direction."
 
But what took him about a minute to explain took two years of paring down and restructuring, not to mention reversing what must have seemed like a hundred years of conditioning not to have a transparent operation.
 
"It was a strategy that really challenged and changed my way of thinking that we could share information with Tasca and Wilkerson," Force said. "The key was my shop that I created in Indy (the Brownsburg, Ind., facility), that built the Ford BOSS 500, together with the Ford engineers and my engineers, that we developed motors, that I was able move, sell product to the other Ford teams, share technology and work together where it helped the Tasca team, it helped myself and I could make a profit and still run against the competition."
 
That competition, at least on the track, includes Hight, who said, "We all made decisions collectively as one big team. Everybody works together and some of the decisions John has to make, I don't envy him a bit. Having to drop a team last year, that was a big deal, but he made it work. We now have three quality Ford Mustangs. I believe we may have been spread a little thin, but now we have the best of everything with the same people working together in this organization."
 
The Auto Club of Southern California Mustang driver said John Force Racing "used the 'One Ford' approach and got all the cars on the same page and working together. And we carried that philosophy into this year.  John moved Mike Neff around, put him in charge over there [from driver of the fourth team to co-crew chief with Austin Coil]. They basically duplicated our Auto Club Mustang, and as you can see the first 17 races, John's and my car, we were just winning four races each and ended up one point apart [at the end of the so-called "regular season"].  I think we learned a lot. It's all about the 'One Ford' approach."
 
Tasca benefited, putting himself in position to compete for the Funny Car crown deep into his third season and after 63 career races. He clinched his No. 7 position by qualifying in his Motorcraft/Quick Lane Shelby Mustang at Denver in July.
 
"When we started the program three years ago, one of my primary goals was to win a championship for sponsors Motorcraft, Quick Lane, and Ford," Tasca said, "I've never been more confident than I am right now for this championship run. I believe our team can win a championship. I'm proud of my team led by Chris [Cunningham] and Marc [Denner]. The entire team and support from our sponsors has put us in a position to compete for a national championship."
Brett Wheatley, director of marketing for the Ford Customer Service Division., said, "Bob has brought the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Racing team to a new level this season. From making the transition to the Ford BOSS 500 engine platform, to winning in Englishtown with the FordParts.com Mustang, Bob's performance has made all of us at Ford proud. We are looking forward to seeing Bob's Mustang win a lot more rounds and, hopefully, the championship."
 
Wilkerson, driver of the Levi, Ray & Shoup Mustang said he's "proud to have the blue oval on my fire suit, I can tell you that. I'd have to say the switch to Ford and teaming up with the Tasca group have really been huge advantages for us. The people at Ford Racing are in this to win, and you can feel that dedication and excitement any time you're around them. They give us support in a lot of ways, but just having a company like Ford behind you means you've got an advantage over a lot of teams out here."
 
He used that edge to win at Gainesville, Norwalk, and Seattle this year and advance to the final at Bristol (where he lost to Force).
 
Hight said aerodynamics account for an enormous part of the advantage. The 2010 body, he said, "is definitely more efficient aerodynamically.  John and Ashley have both gone 316 miles an hour this year, so we owe a lot to [Ford] and their engineers for giving us the best equipment to go out there and compete with."
 
Trust is another key issue. And Force's intuition has told him that he can trust Ford.
 
"I was a truck driver in the early days out of school.  I really had no education.  I kind of learned it in the streets and just dealt with honesty," Force said. "I knew the people I dealt with and looked them in eye, and I could tell where they were coming from. And you either believe or your don't. That is the feeling I get working with Ford engineers and people that I trust to help build race cars to protect my drivers."
 
Allison's radar, too, appears pretty accurate. He said, "John is a man of excellence, a man of passion, and a man with a lot of depth and affinity and love for Ford and everything we do." Furthermore, he said Ford clearly profits from its association with John Force Racing and with Tasca and Wilkerson.
 
"Our research shows that NHRA fans are extremely brand-loyal," Allison said. "Our research also shows that over half of NHRA fans are John Force fans. When you're affiliated with John Force, you have a big leg up reaching out to people who love Ford, who love cars, and who love going fast. We all know when you follow sports and you follow motorsports, you follow winners. You want to be affiliated with somebody who is a winner. Obviously, when it comes to NHRA, when you're dealing with the Champ and you're dealing with The King, when you're dealing with the one and only John Force and all that John brings with him – with Ashley Force-Hood, Robert Hight the reigning champion, Bob Tasca, and Tim Wilkerson.
 
"We are affiliated with proud drivers who are at the top of their field, who are winners, which makes our fans very excited and happy to be affiliated with Ford," he said. "Ford Motor Company knows that within the NHRA community, there's a lot of do-it-yourselfers in the enthusiast world. And that's why we're involved in our Customer Service Division, where Motorcraft and Quick Lane are prominently showcased on the Tasca Funny Car. All in all, we are so blessed and very lucky because we have a rich history when it comes to NHRA where it is our relationship with the Tascas, Bob Glidden, and more recently John Force and the extended Force family."
 
Yes, Wilkerson wants to win the U.S. Nationals again, like he did in 2003. He wants to improve from second- and fourth-place finishes like in the previous two years.
 
Yes, Tasca wants to score his first Indianapolis victory and claim his first series championship, one that would honor his family's deep roots in drag racing -- and, of course, sell more Ford vehicles and parts.
 
Yes, Force Hood has become hungry for a championship, just like her father is. The 2007 Road to the Future Award winner for outstanding rookie would become the NHRA's first female Funny Car champion.
 
Yes, Hight might not have a greedy or stingy bone in his body otherwise, but he likes the "Champion" label and wants to keep it -- despite Don Garlits' advice that he could retire because he had won at Indianapolis. "I want to win championships, though. I want to win more Indys and more championships," Hight said.
 
Ah, but Force also wants to win, craves that No. 15 crown like a chocoholic desperately covets a triple-layer devil's food cake. He wants to prove something -- to himself, mainly, because no one really doubts his ability. He wants to take advantage of a car that is quick and fast. He, like Hight, want to feel like The Champ again.
 
"Right now in this economy, even with budget cuts, I'm on top of the world," Force said. "I'm excited and I came back. In the last three years since my crash in '07, my car was not a hitter. It was not in the game.  With the help of Robert Hight and my daughter and the team around me and living in the gym, I'm back in the game.
 
"John Force Racing along with Ford Motor Company, we have put the numbers on the board, the wins, and have delivered," he said. "Now, we're going to see if we win a championship in the Countdown."
 
It's showtime.

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