The legendary nitro Funny Car champion John Force came out swinging to start the 2016 six-race NHRA Countdown Championship.

Force won the Carolina Nationals Sunday by beating Tommy Johnson Jr. in the final round at zMax Dragway in Charlotte, N.C.

Force clocked a 3.946-second elapsed time at 324.05 mph to defeat Johnson, who races out of the Don Schumacher stable. Johnson had a 3.987-second lap at 315.71 mph.

“I want say thank you to Bruton Smith,” said Force, the 16-time NHRA Funny Car world champ. “It’s stadiums like this that really create the magic in your heart and you really want to race and we had a good day.”

Force, who qualified No. 3, had a victory parade that consisted with wins over Dave Richards, Tim Wilkerson, Ron Capps and then Johnson Jr.

This was Force’s NHRA record 146th career win and third this season. He also had victories at Denver and Sonoma, Calif., during the Western Swing.

More importantly, Force moved up from eighth to third in the point standings in his Chevy Camaro. This also was Jason McCulloch’s first race helping to tune Force’s Funny Car.

“Mike Neff overlooks all my Funny Cars, that why we split it up and brought in AJ (Alan Johnson Racing) and Brian Husen to run that dragster. We don’t know how to run a dragster. We let them take my daughter (Brittany) and it will go where it goes. Then on the other side we had Neff overlooking all the cars, but in the end we needed to polish it and we had McCulloch who needed a home. I hired him because of his talent and it was time to put some polish on things and take the overload off all the people and I made that call last week. We have a lot of work cut out for us. We’re going to be testing all day (Monday, Sept. 19) with my hot rods. You win a race and you come right back and test and I’m excited.”

Force, 67, acknowledged it takes work for him to get to the track each day.

“It’s tough on me, I’m beat up and I’ve been in the gym the last four days,” he said. “I just got up this morning and I was kind of mad and I said I’m going to win today. My wife (Laurie) said you can’t say you’re going to win, that’s all bull jive talk. Right before the finals she said do you remember what you told me this morning? I said I was going to win and if I don’t the attitude is that I have a race car now I can race with. When you get a race car and you’re on your game, I ain’t great, but I’m good and when I’m on my game I can win. If I would have got beat, my attitude is still going to be the same. At the end of the day, it was just a fight and we got the win.”

Force has an 8-1 record against Johnson Jr. in final rounds in the Countdown and he’s 6-0 against Capps in his career in Countdown races.

“There ain’t no magic, just somedays you win and somedays you don’t,” Force said. “Today, I should’ve been out against Wilkerson. I was either a real stupid driver or a real smart driver because I lost my brakes up there. I pulled in and I couldn’t hold it and I thought ‘Oh man, I’m dead here.’ I shoved the clutch pedal in and the tree came down on me and the first thing I thought was I have to get my foot off this clutch because if I hit it the motor can explode and probably blow the tires off and then I wouldn’t have any chance of beating him. Wilkerson was gone and I let it out and I bounced back from that. It has been a great day for me. I’m 67 years old and Donald Trump and Hillary (Clinton) are older than that. What I’m saying is I can do this job and I love it and I want to be a part of it and the day I can’t do it right, I will walk away, but I will still be out here, so you’re stuck with me until the sh** hits the fan.”