OF MUMBLING, RULES AND JOHN FORCE
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During Friday's Q-2 session, Force grenaded an engine, sending carbon fiber shrapnel all over. He safely brought the wounded race car to a stop.
"Everybody on our teams is giving their input to solve what is going on here," Force said. of what happened in Pomona, Phoenix, Phoenix testing and I thought we had it figured out. We drove it to 500 feet in the first session today and it looked good. We had a lifter problem.
"On this run we were going to 800 feet. The bottom line is I lost another body, and that hurts. I'm going on a Million."
Force, always the media opportunist, revealed the television crew of HBO's Real Sports was on hand, filming the racing family for an episode to air March 27, 2018.
"I know the guys filming are all in shock," Force said with a laugh. "It'd be cool if they got footage of that. Boys you got it, I'm going to the bar."
Force really didn't go to the bar, that was just part of the Force schtick.
In real life, Force was right there with his team trying to figure out the issue.
Force made moderate runs on Saturday with a coasting 4.281 elapsed time. Ironically, the run he made to the eighth-mile proved to be his quickest one of the weekend, leaving him #15 in the field.
"We gotta run this thing 300-feet, 500 feet and we said even if we get bumped it's about the liability of the guy in the other lane," Force said. "I hate to have to do that in Gainesville. I love these races. But we've got a gremlin and we are going to find it."
Sixteen-time NHRA Funny Car champion John Force doesn't deny he has critics; some of them both on and off the record in the nitro pits.
This week the NHRA announced point penalties for all categories where drivers either strike the timing blocks or cross the centerline. In the nitro divisions, this penalty extends to the quarter-mile mark.
Force also understands there are those calling this new regulation, "The John Force Rule" following criticism late last season and intensified following his two-car crash with Johnny Lindberg at Wild Horse Motorsports Park when the sixteen-time champion exploded the engine and his car drifted over into Lindberg's lane where the two became entangled and came to a stop in the shutdown area.
"Well, they can do what they want," Force responded, in response to the John Force Rule banter.
"You know, I’ve made statements on TV that I drove on the edge, and I’d drive ’til I crash, and I don’t mean that, that’s great theatrics. The truth is I drive my race car because I don’t want to get hurt and I sure don’t want to hurt nobody else.
"With what I went through in the last year with these cars steering, and the headers, and some of the stuff that’s crazy, I have gone over the centerline. But so have a lot (of other drivers), they’re just pointing me out for whatever reason. But at the end of the day, they passed a rule; they can call it what they want to call it. What’s important to me is to keep people safe.
"NHRA’s going to fine us if we cross over. But if it will save somebody’s life, then it’s a good idea."
The problem with the rule, Force adds, there are variables which sometimes can be unavoidable. For instance, when Force exploded his engine in Phoenix, the concussion of the blast rendered him unconscious.
"I don’t make rules," Force said. "Look, they complained, they wanted rules, now they got rules, and it will bite somebody that’ll get thrown out, and they’ll be furious, ‘Why are you throwing me out?"
"I don’t make the rules; I abide by them. What people say about me, that doesn’t bother me. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me. God bless them. They’re the only ones I’ve got to race."
NHRA Vice President Graham Light said the NHRA had looked into this rule following the first event of the season when 40 minutes of downtime was attributed to the striking and replacement of cones during the NHRA Winternationals.
"The rule applies to every category, including sportsman and motorcycles," Light said. "Too many times we see cars, and I was a racer, and I know what they are going through. If the car is headed towards the wall, the driver says I need to get out of it because it is going to hurt and they get out of it.
"When the car is headed toward the centerline, they say, 'I think I can avoid it. I think I can. I can't."
"We have far more centerline violations than we have in drivers tagging the walls. We have a lot in Alcohol Funny Car, a hard car to drive. Pro Mod. Not putting any blame on drivers. It was time out of safety, we don't need the cars coming together. The time constraints, we spent 40 minutes in Pomona over the course of the four days cleaning up broken foam block. It's not a John Force rule, it's a rule for those who continually cross the centerline."
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