The final day of qualifying at the NHRA Schucks Nationals in Seattle, Wa., was bittersweet for John Force. As temperatures continued to rise throughout the day tricky track conditions hampered John Force and his Castrol GTX Ford Mustang’s chances of getting into one of the tightest Funny Car fields in recent memory.

A decent but not spectacular run in the first session was not enough to move Force into the Top sixteen and in his final attempt his Ford Mustang lost traction just past the halfway point and his hopes of racing on Sunday went up in smoke. From the top end Force was motivated to improve and fire-up his teammates. The final day of qualifying at the NHRA Schucks Nationals in Seattle, Wa., was bittersweet for John Force. As temperatures continued to rise throughout the day tricky track conditions hampered John Force and his Castrol GTX Ford Mustang’s chances of getting into one of the tightest Funny Car fields in recent memory.

A decent but not spectacular run in the first session was not enough to move Force into the Top sixteen and in his final attempt his Ford Mustang lost traction just past the halfway point and his hopes of racing on Sunday went up in smoke. From the top end Force was motivated to improve and fire-up his teammates.

“We need to focus on winning but right now we have to evaluate our car with Austin Coil, Bernie Fedderly and myself. It just isn’t running like it should be running. I just want to be positive and I really want to thank the fans that came by our pit hundreds and hundreds of them. They were telling me ‘You will get in. You will get in.’ It had me mentally positive and I thought it was going to go but it didn’t,” said the winningest driver in NHRA history. “We have three hot rods in the show and we’ll come out here tomorrow and win this race. I’m in this Countdown for the championship so far. I think I’ll probably get hurt here. We will fix this heap.”

Force’s Last Seattle DNQ came 29 years ago but since 2007 the 14-time champion has four DNQ’s.