During today’s teleconference team owner John Force emphatically stated
that his entire team of three Funny Cars and two Super Comp dragsters
would compete in this coming weekend’s Summitracing.com Nationals at The
Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Prior to the opening of the gates on Thursday Force will have made a
series of untimed, 300-foot runs to determine whether or not the
substantial changes that have been made to all of his team’s cars have
rendered them undriveable. This testing will take place tomorrow,
Wednesday, at LVMS. Acknowledging that “testing” within a seven day
period at a national event site is prohibited, NHRA senior vice
president Graham Light explained that an exception is being made due to
not only the circumstances, but the unavailability of another suitable
testing site prior to this weekend’s race.
Among the changes that were made at Murf McKinney’s shop in Indiana are
a widening of the roll cages, the addition of significant amounts of
additional padding around the helmet area (Force suggested the padding
is close enough to his helmet to keep his head from moving side-to-side
under racing conditions) and new safety R-3-type seven point
harnesses. Other changes include the permanent mounting of the safety
belts to the frame rails so that they can no longer potentially slide
along the tubing in the event of a crash.