John Force learned a valuable lesson some 44 years ago, a lesson some of his foes would be wise to pick up on as they face the 72-year old, 17-time Funny Car champion. Some seem to forget in 1985; the relentless Force scored what some might call a meaningless American Drag Racing Association Series championship.

But not Force, the unheralded championship was part of his learning regimen, just like the McEwen lesson where the champ got schooled embarrassingly.

The Goose gooched him in a stunning example of how assumptions can lend terrible results.

"I did a burnout and thought he was broke, and then he beat me. I got out of the car," Force said, voice amping with emotion. "I said, 'Mongoose, you love [Uncle Gene] Beaver, you love me. What did you do? You said you couldn't run.

"He said, 'What I did was I taught you a lesson, and Beaver was part of it. Don't ever listen to the guy you're going to race. He'll get in your head. He'll tell you his car won't run. He'll tell you he has a hangover from the night before. He'll tell you that, 'Oh my God, I can't beat ya, and my car is broke."

"Don't listen to them. Go up there and run your race, what you know what you're doing."

"And he said, "It was a free lesson, kid." And he won that race. He beat me, and I was so upset.

"But I said, "You're my friend."

"He goes, "That's why I taught you. You're a young up-and-coming driver."

Force, fresh off of an Australian tour, filed the lesson away for safe-keeping.

When Force plays off the schtick of he's old and broken down, in other words, he's playing a game of Mongoose, or is he?

Maybe, maybe not.

"I keep a fire in my belly, like how do I beat them? Force asked this reporter. "Well, I went to my doctor. I have a problem. I broke my knee. My knee, when I push to cut a throttle, it doesn't push like normal people. It's going through a cycle because part of it's missing. If I showed you my legs, you would break out laughing. My polio leg, right? It was always terrible.

"Now I'm going to have to start wearing a brace on my leg. I've been wearing a knee thing that broke out my knee with a rash, really bad. Like God, what happened to you? I figured I got flea bites in Tulsa at that hotel, right? In the middle of it, everyone said, "No, that's the knee thing causing you to sweat."

"When I shove my knee, my knee doesn't react. Then it goes a ways, and then it reacts. So I'm losing reaction time. So I'm putting a brace this week on my leg. I took it out of all my medical stuff, called my doctor, he gave me a brand new brace. I paid like $150 for it, got it home, and found out I had one just like it in all my stuff. I already had one. I'm going to take it back. But I put it on, I went and worked out tonight, and I was like, 'Crap."

As Force says, "that ain't bull jive."

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However, let there be a crucial race to be won or a close flight connection to make, and all of a sudden, it's as if he made a trip to a televangelist faith healer.

Maybe on the former but certainly, by Force's admission, not the latter.

"Robert [Hight] and I, we left Kearney, Nebraska, and our plane was six hours late," Force explained. "I got to Denver, and they go, 'Your plane here is 20 minutes late."

"I said, 'We're already five hours late. How in the hell?" So Robert said, "Let's run."

"I ran on to one of those escalators, and I fell down, and Robert, he looked at me like ... I know he loves me. And he said, 'What's wrong?"

"I said, 'Knee quit." And he comes over, and he picked me up, and we ran to the plane; they close the door right in front of me. I said, 'Are you guys a bunch of ? I waited five hours to get here, and then I get here, and you close the door five minutes early?"

"Sir, the plane was supposed to leave 70 minutes ago," they said.

"We waited [for you]." My bag made it to LAX. They transferred the bag, and I ran and fell, and it's like, you know what? But you know what? I can't get mad at them. Robert said, "You can't get mad. They're doing the best they can."

Force knows the deal because lately, he's been slamming the door shut in the face of some of his competitors by using the tricks of the trade. Tricks he said, many seasoned professionals used to beat him down in his formative seasons.

But what many of them don't know is Force admittedly has given them space in his head to take up residence. Most namely, a much younger and talented driver J.R. Todd, with whom once Force schooled on starting line mastery, yet understood the trick will only work once on such a talented driver.

Todd, by Force's admission, had him covered in Sunday's final round in Topeka, but tire smoke enabled the seasoned veteran to drive by for career win No. 154.

"I definitely have old age, but I also have a hundred years of experience. Oh, I go up there, and Ashley goes, "Dad, get up. You can beat J.R. Todd."

"And I said, "Well, maybe my car will outrun him today. He's going to kill me on a tree. So I'm going to squeeze everything that tree's got."

"People don't know what that means, but you know what? I love the kid. I squeezed the tree, and he killed me on the lights. He killed me. Okay? So I love him for that."

It's not that Force cannot accept losing; he learned how to lose with grace back in the early days of his career. But, he also learned how to lose by getting outrun and not intimidated by the legend of his opponent, a key weapon in Force's arsenal these days.

"I lost every high school football game," Force recalled. "I was a quarterback, brought me up from the B team in my junior year. I quarterbacked for three years at Bell Gardens High. The coach was a new coach, Coach Pelenski from Washington State, and he was unbelievable.

"He believed in me because I was a talker, and he was a talker, but I sucked. We lost every game, 27, nine a year. So I know all about losing. And then I come racing, and my daughter wins in her first. With Super Comp, A/Fuel, and all that stuff, it took her ten years. I was in a Funny car for 15 [years] before I won. So, I know all about losing. So I know the game. I know how to get out of a car and smile when an opponent's pissed off."

And of course, at the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, Ca., the racing surface wasn't half as hot as Force's opponent Matt Hagan was when the cagey veteran rolled in and double-bulbed him. Hagan was convinced he did it on purpose, and Force did little to convince him otherwise.

"I like that Hagan has a fire in his belly that he wants to win. I listened to his interviews about how 'Force is crazy."

"He's the guy coming after me.

"Then he says, this weekend, 'Well, he didn't do nothing wrong, but at least he could have apologized."

"Wait a minute. We're racing for the Super Bowl. Why do I owe you an apology? Because by accident, I deep staged? I didn't mean to."

"Well, I don't believe you."

"Well, I don't give a what you believe. I don't want to talk to you no more. I got no more to say [about it] unless you want to say, 'Hey, are you having a good day?"

"Then I'll talk to you."

"At the end of the day, I'm just doing my job. There ain't no rule of seven seconds. People say, 'Well, if you go in there and put on both bulbs, now you rush me."

"No, you can actually make me set, and you can run me out of gas because until you put on a bulb, that seven seconds don't start. Did these guys not know it? You know what I mean? So I like the fire, and I still love him because I'll be corny, but I ain't got no friends. I look at him, standing there, big old kid, all muscles and stuff, veins pouring out of his biceps. But to me, he's a big old Teddy Bear, and that's how I'm going to race him.

"When I raced Don Prudhomme, I didn't look at the Army car. It terrified me. I looked at Don Prudhomme, a man, not the Army.

"I looked at Mongoose. You know, I never looked at them like who they were. Raymond Beadle, the Blue Max. Oh, I couldn't even think about it. I created names for them so they would never get in my head. So to me, Hagan is Teddy Bear, and I love it. I think it's cute. He's a big old monster guy. Looks like the Hulk. You know what I'm saying? I wished I had a lick of his muscles, but I don't. He's got a following that's unbelievable."

Force contends he's doing his job as a driver, and that's getting in their heads. Even when a driver works hard to keep from him getting in their head, Force said, it's still getting in their head.

"I'm getting old, but you know what? I still got it upstairs," Force said. "You know what I mean? I love it, I live it, and I'm going after it and, Hagan, you know what your biggest nightmare is going to be? When I kiss you on the lips on TV, because it's coming, because I don't hate you. I kissed Capps because I didn't hate him. I mean, you might get a rash, but you'll be okay. I've had my shots."

Beware, youngsters, Force keeps a mental logbook.

"A lot of drivers keep notes. They study. You got to know your competition. You got to know who's strong and muscular that can cut a light. You got to know who's young with that energy, that knows how to cut a light. And then there's just a guy that just knows how to cut it. So when you race different individuals, you study them, and you keep notes on them. And I've done that for a hundred years."

Be forewarned, Force is doing his best to keep it all in check, and he's studying every one of his opponents. Most of what he does to win might just come as natural instinct and not preplanned.

"The truth is, at my age, I'm just trying to figure out how to get staged and try to give a half-ass light and pray that my car can win and I can pedal," Force admitted. "I'm pretty good at pedaling because I don't have to think about that. It just happens. I was down there sideways in qualifying. I don't know which race, and I won the race and they said, "How do you do that? Smoke the tires sideways at 600 feet and come back out?" I don't even know how. I just do it."

"The future is Daniel Hood, my son-in-law. Unbelievable. Grubnic, Jimmy Prock, They're the future. My time's up, I'm the past, but you know what, never forget something that a man said to me once, the smartest guy I ever knew, Gene Beaver, he said, 'Be aware of the past because the past will haunt you," and that's going to be my new T-shirt. Y'all f'ing think I'm dead? Well, I'm just starting."

That's Force being Force, even if he is channeling his inner Mongoose and Uncle Beavs.