The sky did look like it was falling.

But Funny Car icon John Force tried his best not to sound like Chicken Little as daughter Ashley warmed up his Castrol GTX Start-up Ford Mustang, then performed a 60-foot burnout on the Heartland Park quarter-mile. It came just one day after he drove the car to his 118th career victory in the O'Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals.

"She'll be OK," he said nearly a dozen times, as he paced off his nervous energy, fussing like a mother of a bride before her big walk down the aisle. That seemed to reassure him, at least. He refers to her as "my baby," so he understandably was wrapped a wee bit tight as he tried to balance his emotions.

It was a sight at once scintillating and scary for Force.

He had longed to share his passion with the family he said he had neglected while building his drag-racing reputation. "This is a chance for her to see what my world is all about," he said on the cold, grey, windy Kansas morning. And this was the closest Ashley Force ever had come to stepping into his elite domain.

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However, a flood of what-ifs rolled over him. He had seen more than one man -- more than one smart, technologically brilliant man -- freeze at the thought of doing so much as a burnout before giving up the idea of a driving career. He said even he didn't think he'd have the nerve ever to whack the throttle in the beginning. His uncle, Gene Beaver, a competitor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, told him, "Hit the throttle!" He replied, "Oh, no -- that's going to be loud!"

But Ashley didn't have that fear. "She hit the throttle," he said proudly. "She got after it. She ain’t afraid to hit it. She almost blew the awning off. I know she’s nervous."

Later, holding his hand over his heart, he admitted, "She's more worried about me tipping over."

Ashley certainly didn't seem worried about herself.

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"It wasn't as scary as I thought it'd be," she said after a pass her dad pronounced perfect. "When I stood next to the car on Friday when dad warmed it up, that scared me a little, just because I had never stood that close to one of those cars before. But it sounds totally different when you are actually in the car."

She said the vibration when watching on the starting line "hurts my chest.” By contrast, making her own pass is more peaceful. "It's happening all around me," she said, "so I don't feel it."

Some of the levers are reversed in the Funny Car from their position in the A/Fuel dragster in which she has raced for the last year and a half. "They are set up pretty much the same, with a few differences. Instead of pulling the fuel lever, like in my car, you push it in the Funny Car," she said.

Ashley likes to tease her father and tease about him. "I'm going to mess with him on the starting line," she said, fantasizing about the days they might race against each other. "I think a lot of drivers are intimidated, but to me he's just Dad. He'll be so worried about his little girl in the other lane that by the time he recovers, I'll be gone. At least that's how it is in my dreams."

John Force simply wanted Ashley to be familiar with the car. He even suggested she sleep in it and wear her helmet when outside the car -- "like people wouldn't think that was weird," she said.

For all his emphasis on the Next Generation -- it's emblazoned on the Castrol and Auto Club of Southern California Ford Mustangs that he, Eric Medlen, and Robert Hight drive -- Force still is coming to terms with seeing his 22-year-old daughter -- the one who bears a striking resemblance to his wife but sports a ponytail and wears some Gen-X-chic shade of pink lipstick -- strap on her helmet and climb into the 8,000-horsepower, nitromethane-burning race car.

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His flair for the sensational leaped to the foreground. He warned the three television crews and other onlookers that these outrageous machines can detonate and injure bystanders. "We don't want to blow anybody up," he said.

Then, almost blithely, he said, "But if the fear factor ain’t there, why do it?"

He rhapsodized about drag racing and reminisced about his first warm-up and burnout: "Before I did my first burnout, Uncle Beav handed me a can of beer and said, 'Drink half of this.' I did and did the burnout, and the world was like a kaleidoscope. This gets the ol' blood pressure going. There's this moment like going on stage. That's life, and that's what makes it bitchin'."

Still, he was concerned that she didn't have enough familiarity with the Funny Car.

"Robert and Eric ran these cars when they worked in the shop, worked on the crew, for 10 years," Force said. "They built these cars and knew them inside and out. They knew the drill. She didn’t have that. She has to learn from the bottom of the bottom. It’s just like a jet fighter pilot. They don't put them in there and let them fly the plane right away."

In the early days of drag racing, he said, officials would blindfold a driver when administering the licensing test and instruct him to grab the brake handle and perform other duties. In the event of an accident or fire, a driver's vision could be impaired by smoke or some fluky circumstance.

Immediately after winning his third consecutive event last Sunday, he was anticipating not only what might happen the next day but what might happen in the upcoming year and a half.

"If something happens to me, it's in the contract with Castrol and Ford that the Force name continues -- and so do the contracts," he said.

"But whatever she feels is right is what she's going to do," he said. "In '07, she'll be pro. I'm planning on a Funny Car, but if she don't like it, that's going to be that kid's choice."

In the pits Monday, he said, "A person's going to take their journey in life because it's what they want to do. I am not going to push this. If something happens, I'll know it's what she wanted to do."

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If something happens? He harped on that to his crew chief, too. Austin Coil, ever concerned about the immediate task before the team, questioned why letting Ashley sit in the Castrol GTX Mustang was a priority now. "We're in this points chase, and we really need to test," Coil said. "That's what's most important."

Force called a time out. "Coil, read this piece of the contract," he said, pointing to the fine print. "I said if anything happens to me, if I get smoked, the only thing that gives you a paycheck is the kid goes in the seat."

Said Force with a laugh, "He said, 'Line her up at Topeka!' And I said, 'Coil, you're so obvious.' "

It was obvious that Ashley Force was focused but not overwhelmed on this Memorial Day milestone in her four-year drag-racing career. She handled with aplomb everything from three separate TV projects swirling around her to a handful of fans seeking autographs to her dad hugging her tightly and kissing her on the forehead for the cameras. She cringed at that last gesture. "She always hated that. Hated it as a baby," Force said.

Minutes later, she said she already had called her mother and sisters at the hotel and asked them to "get here fast." Taking a deep breath, she said, "I need somebody calm here."

She said she also wondered if having her father tutor her was a smart choice.

"He's been pretty good, but he's always crazy and running around," she said. "He just gets really excited. At first I thought, 'Do I really want him to be telling me how to drive a Funny Car?' But who else would be any better? He knows it like the back of his hand. And my dad will tell me everything I need to know and be as truthful as he possibly can."

She said Eric Medlen and John Force Racing rival Gary Scelzi, a three-time Top Fuel champion, also have helped her. "She'd better not listen to any advice from me!" Scelzi, who stayed in Topeka to test Monday, quipped.

"Gary Scelzi told me to head to the gym and work on building some Popeye muscles," Ashley said. "'You're gonna need 'em to steer one of these things,' he told me. Like right now, I barley have Olive Oyl muscles."

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She said perpetuating the Force legacy brings no extra pressure, for her dad has hired longtime crew members Medlen and Hight within the last two years. "Eric is like a brother, and we watched him go through it. Then Robert, my brother-in-law, went through it," she said. "So I'm just the most recent one."

Ashley, somewhat familiar with an enclosed body from her experience at Frank Hawley's driving school, said she prefers a Funny Car for safety reasons: "A dragster is where you really don't want to be."

Three separate television crews filmed Ashley Force's first Funny Car moments under a heavy cloud cover and in cold, windy conditions. Cameraman Tom O'Connor and the ESPN technical folks were there. Kelly Ryan, an associate producer for Infinite Machine Inc., was crafting a documentary about women in motorsports. And Brent Travers, executive producer at Schmaguuli Productions, continued filming for the reality TV series he's pitching to the networks.

"Everybody's over-thinking. Everybody's all around the car," John Force said, "but there ain't nothin' to capture. This is going to go on for months."

It might go on for years. Ashley's younger sisters, Brittany and Courtney, have their Super Comp licenses, as does mother Laurie.

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