John Force, drag racing’s biggest winner, remembered rival Al Hofmann with fondness Monday even while admitting that theirs was an especially contentious
relationship.
Hofmann, who finished second to Force in the 1995 Funny Car standings and
who was a Top 4 finisher five straight seasons in the mid-1990s, died last week
of a heart attack at his home in Florida. He was 60.
“Al Hofmann may not have won the NHRA title,” Force said, “but in my
opinion he was still a champion because he fought me to the wire every year, on
the track and off. I remember the gut wrenching feeling of just having to look
at him knowing how bad he wanted to win.
“I gotta hand it to him, he pulled no punches. He would fight with you or
he would just tell you to go to hell (but) as mad as he made me, I gotta say I
loved the guy for it because he came up just like me on the old East Coast match
race circuit, fighting every day just to feed himself and buy race car parts.”
Force gained a new appreciation for Hofmann after the veteran was
hospitalized in Gainesville, Fla., following a crash at the 1997 ACDelco
Gatornationals. “I remember going to the hospital after he crashed,” Force said.
“I felt so bad when I saw him in that state, all broken up, laying in the
hospital bed, but then he turned to me and said, ‘Force, get the hell out of the
hospital.’ He said I was only there to steal his media. That was Al Hofmann.
“But there’s a side of him that a lot of people don’t know. When I sent my
bus to take him home from the hospital, Bob Fisher told me that when he took him
home (to Umatilla, Fla.), you’d have thought the president had come home. You
won’t believe it, Fisher said, but they love this guy.
“His team loved him, his family loved him, his neighbors loved him and his
fans loved him. It just goes to show that we all have our own way and I gotta
say that in the later years, he would call me up from time to time and tell me,
‘Force, don’t let those guys beat us up.’ ‘Cause I was just like him. He was a
real drag racer, a guy I really raced.”
In fact, Force and Hofmann met in 13 different final rounds in the 1990s.
Hofmann won the last such meeting at the Texas Motorplex on Oct. 19, 1997.
