Dave Densmore wouldn’t wish the season he’s had on his worst enemy – if he had one.

 

The man whose colleagues call him Densy can only wonder what was done in the past to justify the pain he and the rest of John Force Racing has endured in 2007.

 

 Densmore is the team publicist and his daily challenge is to make the team appear in a positive light. Even Superman has his kryptonite.

 

The JFR infrastructure of good leadership and positive energy gets the credit for helping Densmore and others make it through.

 

“It's been a difficult year but we're talking positively about a whole lot of things,” Densmore said. “Really my inspiration has been John Medlen; actually he's been the inspiration for the entire team. He's inspired Force, Force has inspired me and hopefully we've inspired everybody else on the team. We've managed to be as positive as we can over what's happened, to make something positive out of the negative that we've run into this year.”

 

The unraveling of what promised to be a blockbuster season actually started with Densmore and worked its way through the team. A visit to the doctor’s office in early March revealed Densmore was on the verge of a heart attack and required a quintuple heart bypass to prevent such a catastrophe.

 

“I went to the doctor for my annual physical and had a little heart palpitation and elevated blood pressure, which is never the case,” Densmore said. “As a precaution, my doctor sent me to do a stress test and I didn't expect anything to come from it. I failed it miserably so they put me in the hospital two days later. They were going to put a couple of stents in and they got in there and found out that they couldn't fit in anything. 

 

“The surgery knocked me down for a couple of weeks. Fortunately I had to be re-plumbed and I'm glad that I did because I needed to be as healthy as I could be to do the rest of this year.”

 

 

It’s the best and the worst job in motorsports. Our motto is:  It's often painful but never boring. That's pretty much the deal when handling John. It's a joy showing up for work everyday because you never know what you're going to get. - Dave Densmore on being publicist for John Force Racing

 

 

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Expecting John Force to take the news badly, Densmore initially sought to lessen the blow.

 

“I finally called him when I was going through the second surgery and just as I expected, he went bananas,” Densmore said, with his trademark smile.

 

“So then he talked to me the next day -- after I had come out of surgery -- and everything looked like I was going to be alright. He asked if he could tell somebody and I said that if he needed to tell somebody he could tell them but I was going to be fine.”

 

Densmore was still in the hospital when JFR driver Eric Medlen was critically injured in a testing accident. He credits the surgery for saving his life upon learning about Medlen. 

 

“I told (Force) that if I had not gone in and had my own physical problems taken care of, if I had been in Gainesville for the practice session, and had known Eric had crashed I probably would have died too,” Densmore recounted. “I don't think my heart would've taken it. So my problem started and then we had Eric's crash, it's just been one thing after another. 

Densmore will never forget the moment Force’s personal assistant Kelly Antonelli broke the Medlen news to him.

 

“I got the call while he was in the helicopter going to the hospital,” said Densmore. “The problem was compounded for me because Eric was the first person who called me when I was down. He had managed to negotiate the hospital telephone system. He was the first call when I was back in my room after recovery and we talked for a while and he told me that they miss me at the racetrack and they were going testing tomorrow and blah blah blah blah.

 

“It took a little while for it to sink in and then we were in the situation of I've got to deal with this ya know this is my job. I did the best thing that I could under the circumstances because that's what Eric would've wanted. So from my hospital, I talked to the team everyday and sent regular daily releases out from my hospital room. It was probably the most difficult week of my professional career. 

 

 

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Fighting his own person battles and dealing with the tragedy of a dear friend, Densmore found the strength to remain Force’s voice of reason.

 

“I talked to John almost everyday and it was almost, I mean obviously he was very emotional through the whole thing but he was what he is, -- a great leader,” Densmore said. “He knew that he had to be strong going through there. He said that Eric was like the son that he never had and that's very true. I mean, Eric even lived with him at his condo for a while and they were very close. The problem with John is that John had told Eric and he told Ashley, he told all his drivers, ‘you need to be one with your race car and your race car isn't going to hurt you.”

 

“(Force) believed that -- he didn't believe that you could get hurt in a funny car,” Densmore continued. “He had had 12 or 13 crashes since I was working with him and the worst thing that he ever got out of the deal were a couple of burns on his hands and some burns off his eyebrows. I think that he was more concerned with the Top Fuel dragsters and that's why he never went in that direction because you had the bigger tires right beside you and you had the engine right in front of you. I think with his experience in a Funny Car he didn't think that you could get hurt and he had told his drivers that -- and that was the thing that he would solve in his own mind. 

 

“He was thinking man I told him he couldn't get hurt in this whole deal and this is what happens? It took him a long time to do that. It took him a long time to come to grips with that and there was a time that I didn't think he was going to come to grips with it. Actually John Medlen stepped up and kind of brought him back to reality and told him 'John you're the leader of this thing and I know it's hard but you've got to lead.’”

 

Densmore admitted that he also followed Medlen’s lead as Force battled the demons of Eric’s death.

 

“We'd sit in the bus and he'd say I don't think I can go on and I'd say ‘Well, you've got to -- you don't have any choice. I'd say you're the leader, you've got all these people that depend on you and you can't throw it up now because that's not what Eric would want. I just kept telling him that he had to think about what Eric would want. I think that the counseling that he got from John Medlen, who we both think is the strongest individual that we've ever met, was what gave John the strength to go on and I think – me, as well -- the strength to go on. Really John Medlen is the reason that we are where we are right now, moving forward instead of everybody ready to just check it in.”

 

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To see Force win in Bristol, Densmore conveyed that he watched a healing in progress. He recounted how the victories in Bristol and later in Sonoma enabled Force to open his heart and expose another side of the champion.

 

Sonoma’s victory elicited an emotional outpouring from Force, one that left a press conference speechless, until he asked to be excused. From the back of the media center, “A member of the press spoke up and said, “We love you John.”

 

Force walked from the Sonoma tower in tears.

 

“I didn't counsel him at all after that,” Densmore admitted. “That was an experience that I don't know what I could have said to him. He apologized because he didn't think that was appropriate. I told him don't apologize, you were showing honest emotion. There are so few people, particularly in a professional sport that show honest emotion. I said there's no reason to apologize for that. I said, you told the media how you felt and there's no reason to apologize for that and I don't care who you are. I think he was a little stunned at his own emotion though. He's a very emotional person but I think he was a little surprised that he was so emotional at winning that race but you had to expect him to be emotional. 

 

“This was a race that Eric won on his home race track, in his hometown, all his family was there and John wanted so bad to win that race for the family and for the town that when he did I mean he was just a wash of emotion.”

 

As the year progressed, thing started to normalize, well as much as possible around Force, when a few months later – the racing community held their collective breath as the 13-time champion’s car broke apart in a second round win over Kenny Bernstein.

 

Once again, Densmore had to question the logic of so much misfortune in one season directed at the JFR team.

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“It was awful,” Densmore recalled. “I was in the press room at the time and watching it on the television monitor and Susie Arnold, who is Kenny Bernstein's press woman, grabbed me by the arm when we were watching it on TV and she said we've got to go. I really didn't want to go -- to be completely honest. Looking at that thing on the screen, not knowing really what had happened, all you could see was debris flying, cars crashing into one another, but no.”

 

Densmore and Arnold rode a golf cart to the accident scene.

 

“When we first pulled up I felt better because I heard John screaming and hollering and asking, “Did we win the round? Did we win the round? And then he told them if we won the round don't let them take it away from us. He was conscious. He was hurting but he was irate about the TV interview, about the fact that his car was hurt, he was in the countdown but he couldn’t come back for the next round so I had hope that he was going to be better after that. 

 

“If you had been down there and there wouldn't have been any sound -- that would not be John. This was John, he was all broken up but his heart and his emotions were still there.”

 

Densmore had previous experience with a client, who was also a close friend, losing his life on the track. He worked with the Reher & Morrison team when driver Lee Shepherd was killed during a testing accident in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

 

Just like Densmore is attached to Force, he was attached to Shepherd – a driver he labels as one of the purest talents to ever race in Pro Stock. He pointed out that doing PR is impossible without becoming emotionally attached.

 

“I don't know how anybody does it if they don't have a personal relationship with their clients,” Force said. “I mean you have to know these people and you have to know how they think and react and that helps you with your job but that really opens you up for devastation when things don't go as planned.”

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Densmore found it hard to fight the tears when he saw Force in the hospital after the Dallas crash.

 

“I told him that if this had happened to your head and torso you wouldn't have come out, but he's going to come out fine,” Densmore recounted. “The wounds are going to heal and he just can't wait to get back racing. His goal now is to make the Ford, not just the Funny Car but the Ford as a whole safer for everybody. That's really more important to him right now in his career than all the championships and all the victories.”

 

The Force experience has given Densmore a trip to the emotional extremes.

 

“It’s the best and the worst job in motorsports,” Densmore said. “Our motto is:  It's often painful but never boring. That's pretty much the deal when handling John. It's a joy showing up for work everyday because you never know what you're going to get. He's like a real person though and has been throughout our entire association. We've been very open and up front with one another and we can talk about whatever is on our minds -- we get mad at each other, but John's personality is one that if he gets mad he forgets about it in a little while, he just goes on down the road. So you know he's not one to hold a grudge.”

 

Densmore smiled again when recollecting an encounter with Force when it came to quotes released to the media essentially explaining that he wouldn’t return for the 2007 season.

 

“He might be upset with what you did or what you didn't do,” Densmore said. “He was really upset with me at the hospital after this last race because I had told him that he wasn't going to drive at Richmond and he was arguing with me. He said, ‘How can you tell the media that I’m not going to drive into Richmond?” 

 

“I said, “Look at you, and he said, ‘I'm still in the countdown.”

 

“I said, ‘No, you're not. If one of three guys show up in Richmond then you're out of the countdown. He said, ‘Yeah I might do this and I might do that and there might be a miracle -- they might break down on the way to the races.’ He was really mad. Then finally after about four days, reality had set in. But, he was adamant that I had made a big mistake by telling the media that he wasn’t going to drive.”

 

Densmore, when he’s doing his job, is friend, counselor and publicist all wrapped into one.

 

“Don’t get paid extra for that,” Densmore said with a laugh. “Just one paycheck covers it all.”