MANY HAPPY RETURNS, BUT TOP FUEL’S BRITTANY FORCE IS READY TO WIN AGAIN

Written by Susan Wade, photo by Roger Richards    Sat, 2021-05-15 14:00

 

Brittany Force has had plenty of time to reacquaint herself with the sport after sitting out all but the first two races of the 2020 season.

It has been euphoric for the 2017 Top Fuel champion to be back in her 11,000-horsepower Flav-R-Pac Dragster, competing once again with her crew chief Dave Grubnic and the entire John Force Racing team.

But she has blown away the pixie dust and stored the pom-pons – and now she has her boxing gloves on and is ready to duke it out with the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series elite.

After leading the Top Fuel field in the first day of qualifying for the NGK NTK Four-Wide Nationals at Concord, N.C.’s zMAX Dragway, Force said, “I’m excited to be out here at the Four-Wides. We won back in 2016. Looking for our first win of the season with Dave Grubnic and this Flav-R-Pak team. Stepping away last year was tough. We’re all excited to be back out here, pumped to be back out here. I just love it.

“We’ve had a couple of races under our belt. And we want to win this thing,” she said.

She sent a strong message that she means business with her class-quickest and fastest 3.662-second elapsed time and 333.08-mph speed on the 1,000-foot course that eclipsed Mike Salinas’ track-record 3.687-second run from April 2019 and Spencer Massey’s 332.18-mph speed mark that had held up since April 2012. (Force still owns both ends of the national record: 3.623 seconds, September 2019, Reading, Pa., and 338.17 mph, November 2019, Las Vegas.)

“That .66, that’s a hell of a frickin’ run,” Force said. “I wasn’t expecting that. I thought we’d be running, like, a .68. But .66 is absolutely incredible for this team. We grabbed that No. 1 spot, and now tomorrow we really could figure this car out in the heat and get us set up for race day.”

She said she could feel a stellar, and maybe a little bit scary, performance as it unfolded.

“It felt like it left hard. It threw me in the back of my seat, and then it hung on the whole time,” Force said. “We got down there. It started moving around quite a bit.” But she said she “calmed down on the steering wheel and got it through that finish line. I was just hoping it would hang on and we can get there. A lot of cars weren’t making it. A lot of the cars were shaking. But we were able to get to that finish line and grab that No. 1 spot.”

The field will be set for Sunday eliminations after two final qualifying sessions Saturday.

Her nemesis, Steve Torrence, took the provisional No. 2 position and was the only other Top Fuel driver with an elapsed time in the 3.6-second range (3.683 at 316.97). Leah Pruett was third at 3.718 (and a 324.59-mph speed), Antron Brown was fourth a 3.761, and Gatornationals winner Josh Hart was fifth Friday at 3.776 (and 324.44 mph) to round out the top five.

Anticipating next weekend’s return to Houston, Force said, “I like back-to-back races. I hate sitting out, two weekends off, a weekend at home. I like to go back to back-to-back. It keeps you mentally in the game, keeps your mindset in the game – and the whole team collectively, it just keeps you where your head needs to be. It keeps you in the game. I like it. I like that he pace is picking up. We’re starting to roll, especially after a year away.”

The confidence from a pass like Friday’s, she said, builds confidence “more for my crew chief and the team. Now we could do what we want, because we feel pretty safe. We’re locked in the show, unless things dramatically change tomorrow. So now we can push the car if we wanted, play around how we want, and get it set up for race day. We’re locked in. We’re solid.

“It lets us relax a little bit,” Force said. “It doesn’t matter how we run tomorrow – we’ll be good.”

 

 
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