FORCE VERSUS FORCE
Sun, 2008-06-01 10:28
For John and Ashley Force, the good news is that their Castrol GTX Ford
Mustangs, his green-and-white, hers white-and-green, were the two quickest Funny
Cars down the quarter mile Saturday during final qualifying for the 20th annual
O’Reilly Auto Parts Summer Nationals at Heartland Park-Topeka.
The bad news is that since neither was able to eclipse the times rung up
Friday by No. 1 qualifier Tony Bartone and others in optimum conditions, they
will race each other in Sunday’s first round – a match neither relished.
“Right now we gotta focus on winning this race,” said the elder Force,
whose resume includes eight wins at Heartland Park. “Ashley needs to stay up in
the points and I need to get up in the points. That’s just the way it
is.”
For John and Ashley Force, the good news is that their Castrol GTX Ford
Mustangs, his green-and-white, hers white-and-green, were the two quickest Funny
Cars down the quarter mile Saturday during final qualifying for the 20th annual
O’Reilly Auto Parts Summer Nationals at Heartland Park-Topeka.
The bad news is that since neither was able to eclipse the times rung up
Friday by No. 1 qualifier Tony Bartone and others in optimum conditions, they
will race each other in Sunday’s first round – a match neither relished.
“Right now we gotta focus on winning this race,” said the elder Force,
whose resume includes eight wins at Heartland Park. “Ashley needs to stay up in
the points and I need to get up in the points. That’s just the way it
is.”
“I’ve given up worrying about it,” Ashley said, “because it’s just a part
of it and there’s nothing you can do about it. So we’ll go up there and
hopefully both cars will get down the track and we’ll have a good close,
side-by-side race. I’d hate to get in a pedalfest with him, but hopefully with
the cool weather our car will run like it has been and we’ll go some
rounds.”
“Well, at least we know there’ll be a Mustang in the second round,” said a
philosophical Dean “Guido” Antonelli, crew chief on Ashley’s car. “We just
don’t know what color it’ll be. So, for our sponsors, we can guarantee that
someone’s going to second round and I guess that’s not all bad.”
Ashley, who has beaten her dad in two of three career meetings and is one
of only 14 drivers with a winning record against him, was clocked in 4.934
seconds on her first Saturday run, tying her with teammate Robert Hight for the
quickest quarter mile of the session. Saturday afternoon, she improved to
4.920, the quickest of the entire day although by just the narrowest of margins
over her dad (4.921).
“We were hoping actually to run a click better, but it spun a little bit
down track and dropped some holes,” Antonelli said. “But we’ll take that and
make some adjustments and see if we can improve tomorrow. Hopefully we can get
by John and just go one round at a time.”
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