He had never driven anything wilder than an F-150 truck.
 
But Robert Hight had that . . . something.
 
John Force saw it -- although he said Hight confused him a few years ago, asking to stay closer to home to be with wife Adria (Force's eldest daughter and company CFO), then asking to drive the organization's third Ford Mustang Funny Car. Still, Force saw the desire in Hight's bright blue eyes. A multi-time champion can recognize that in another hungry soul.

He had never driven anything wilder than an F-150 truck.
 
But Robert Hight had that . . . something.
 
John Force saw it -- although he said Hight confused him a few years ago, asking to stay closer to home to be with wife Adria (Force's eldest daughter and company CFO), then asking to drive the organization's third Ford Mustang Funny Car. Still, Force saw the desire in Hight's bright blue eyes. A multi-time champion can recognize that in another hungry soul.
 
He already knew Hight could prepare a car -- he had helped Force earn seven of his championships and 56 event victories as clutch specialist on the Castrol GTX Mustang. And he had no doubt that Hight could tame a 7,000-horsepower, nitro-burning monster. So he chose Hight to drive the Auto Club of Southern California Ford Mustang.
 
Hight paid Force back Saturday evening by clinching the 2009 Funny Car championship in just five years.
 
"I still can't believe it, John taking a chance on a guy from Northern California who's never driven anything  but an F-150 truck and selling me to all these sponsors and then making it happen," Hight said immediately after receiving the gold-plated series championship trophy. "It's like a dream come true. It's surreal."
 
Tom McKernan, president of the Auto Club of Southern California, had told Force back before the 2005 season, "Listen, I don't tell you how to run race cars and I don't listen to you about how to sell insurance. You've got to do what you do and do the best you can. We stand behind you. If you think this kid can drive and you believe in him, we're cool."
 
Said Hight, "They stood behind me. And thank you, Auto Club and Tom McKernan.
 
"It helps to have sponsors like the Automobile Club of Southern California and Ford," Hight said, especially appreciative in becoming the first, at least in recent memory, to win a championship after two DNQs and seven first-round defeats. "These guys pay a lot of money, and they never said, 'Hey, you've got to get this fixed or else.' They knew we were struggling, that we didn't forget how to race, that we knew what we were doing. They believed in us, which made our job easier. If somebody's breathing down your neck, that makes it a little tougher to get through the problems."
 
Again this Nov. 1, McKernan delivered a pep talk that Hight long will remember.
 
Just before the final round of the Las Vegas Nationals, "Listen, you've had a great year. There's a lot of pressure on you right now, but none of that pressure is from us." He told Hight to "go out there and do what you want to do . . . and have fun." McKernan added, "If you don’t win another round this year, it has been a great year for us. We're proud of you."
 
Hight didn't have to ponder his choices. "I wanted to finish that thing off and go to Pomona with a pretty nice lead," he said.
 
That's just what he did, then parlayed that into the best of his five top-five finishes in as many seasons.
 
The key to it, Hight said, was the collaborative effort by three John Force Racing crew chiefs -- his own, Jimmy Prock, with a huge assist from Dean "Guido" Antonelli and Ron Douglas, Ashley Force Hood's crew chiefs.
 
"Without them, we probably wouldn't have made the Countdown. We had no confidence -- at all. We changed to their combination. Jimmy Prock has run with it and made it work perfectly. But without them getting us started, we wouldn't have been there," Hight said.
 
He said, "Jimmy Prock just got this thing fixed. It's all about timing. He got it all right at the right time. It couldn't have happened better. You don't dream like this, trust me. This is absolutely amazing what we've done in the last few months. It's all about believing in your team."
 
He did, even in April at Bristol, when he failed to qualify.
 
Said Hight, "I made the statement when we didn't qualify that this is too good a team, that we'll be back. This car will contend for the championship at the end of the year. I was a little nervous after making that statement. But I still believe what I said was right. This team IS good."
 
Even so, he said that once he slipped into the Countdown, "I didn't expect to have this kind of success." Furthermore, he said he "never had a race car like this," never one this reliable.

NO ASTERISK -- Hight is a baseball fan, and he understands the "Roger Maris asterisk." That's the reference to the fact that many questioned the validity of Maris' 1961 home-run record that topped Babe Ruth's -- because Ruth achieved the feat in 154 games and Maris used the expanded 162-game schedule to break the mark.
 
Some have argued that this Hight championship might need an asterisk because of the controversy at Indianapolis that resulted in Hight making the 10-driver Countdown field at the eleventh hour. But Hight deflected any such talk.
 
"I'm not going to answer anything, because I don't know anything," the Auto Club Mustang driver said. "I don't know if there were calls made. That's not my business. My job is to drive my race car and do the best I can for my sponsors and John and everybody else. So I don't get into all that.
 
"I know the Countdown cost us a championship, and . . . it's going to get us one. I know people keep talking about that," Hight said of boss John Force's loss to him in the U.S. Nationals semifinals, "but I don't think there's any doubt my race car has talked for itself and Jimmy's (crew chief Prock's) performance speaks for itself. We're winning on pure performance and great race car.
 
"When everybody talks about the negative things, that takes away from Jimmy Prock has accomplished and what the team has done. I'm not going to think about any of the negatives."

HOW IT BEGAN -- Newly crowned Funny Car champion Hight remembered not just the folks at John Force Racing who played a part in his career but also the man who gave him his first job in the sport.
 
"I owe a lot to Roger Primm," he said. "He is the guy who got me started in drag racing. I wanted to do it so long. He finally gave me the shot. He gave me a job working on his car, and that is how I got to meet the John Force Racing group. This is all I wanted to do.”
 
He said he has loved drag racing since he "saw these cars run and . . . used to follow it on TNN when it was two weeks tape delayed. I finally got to go to a race in Sacramento when I was going to college. I saw two Funny Cars run. It was John Force and Jim Dunn at a match race. When I saw those cars run I knew this is what I wanted to do. I didn't think I would ever get here. I never thought I would really get to drive. I wanted to learn about these cars. I was a mechanic. This is where I wanted to be. This is what I wanted to do. These machines are unbelievable. I still feel that way."

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