In one day John Force crashed a pit bike, nearly got beat up by a fan, shuttled his daughter via scooter through traffic leading into the track in time for her to get low elapsed time and managed enough gumption to run the quickest Funny Car time in Friday’s qualifications. It’s a good thing that downsizing his team to three cars has allowed him to slow down some.

Force’s 4.066 elapsed time on Friday at the NHRA Winternationals was enough to place him third in the field, and well ahead of where he was 24 hours earlier. His Thursday qualifying attempt was disallowed when it was discovered his Castrol Ford had experienced a rear-wheel start.

In one day John Force crashed a pit bike, nearly got beat up by a fan, shuttled his daughter via scooter through traffic leading into the track in time for her to get low elapsed time and managed enough gumption to run the quickest Funny Car time in Friday’s qualifications. It’s a good thing that downsizing his team to three cars has allowed him to slow down some.

Force’s 4.066 elapsed time on Friday at the NHRA Winternationals was enough to place him third in the field, and well ahead of where he was 24 hours earlier. His Thursday qualifying attempt was disallowed when it was discovered his Castrol Ford had experienced a rear-wheel start.

“Brittany got her teaching certificate, but she loves to race … she didn’t make it into the field yesterday and called me in a panic saying she was stuck in traffic, so I had to run and get her … got her just in time to make the run,” Force recalled. “I ran into the pits today and hit a plastic thing and it threw me. I always wanted to jump up like [Raymond] Beadle and throw my hands up. I did and my wife just looked at me. The last time I crashed, I couldn’t get up.

“Then I saw a friend, or who I thought was a friend, on a golf cart with his kids and I went over there to say hello and ran into his golf cart, and he looked at me and said, ‘Have you got a problem? I almost got popped over that. If I had been Ashley or Robert, I could have gotten away with it.”

Part of Force’s inspiration to keep his energy level at a premium was fueled by a local newspaper questioning whether he still had gas in the tank.

“I laid all night in bed looking at that article,” he said. “They threw me under the bus, but that pumps me up. At least they know they have one person reading their paper.”

Two days into the new season it hasn’t taken the 14-time champion long to figure out he’s got a stronger team by running only three cars.

“I never realized how overloaded I was with four cars,” Force admitted. “Running between cars … trying to keep people happy … running over to my girl’s cars … when you take out a car … it just takes a big hunk of the load off of you. It’s amazing that I can just focus on my own stuff.”

No matter how frayed that focus might be.