John and Courtney Force are our next guests on Fan4Racing Fan2Fan NASCAR & Race Talk on Monday, March 24, 2014 at 9 pm ET for Courtney and 9:30 pm ET for John. Call 347-996-5176 during the LIVE broadcast to interact with our guests and the Fan4Racing panel.
Photo – NHRA
The most prolific winner in drag racing history with 120 NHRA tour victories and 13 series championships, all in a series of Castrol GTX-sponsored hybrids called “Funny Cars” that are capable of zero to 330 mile-an-hour acceleration in 4.6 seconds. Is the current NHRA national record holder for quarter-mile performance at 4.665 seconds, 333.58 mph. John has an unbelievable winning streak, having earned at least one tour victory in each of the last 20 seasons. John entered the 2006 season having qualified for a record 369 consecutive races dating back to the start of the 1988 season.
John Force was Driver of the Year for all of American motor racing in 1996; is a 13-time member of the Auto Racing All-America Team selected by the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association; last December, in London, accepted the John Bolster Award for lifetime achievement from the editors of AutoSport Magazine, the acknowledged “bible” of Formula 1 racing.
John Force is the most prolific winner and, arguably, the most recognizable name in professional drag racing history. Having earned more than 100 tour victories, the only driver in NHRA history with triple digit wins, the one-time truck driver has won almost as many fans with his mouth as with his motor. The king of the quarter mile, he also is the king of the quip. “I just traded one trailer park for another,” he has said, comparing his upbringing in a small trailer park in Bell Gardens, Calif., to his current status as a road warrior whose three Funny Car teams virtually live their competitive lives out of eight 18-wheel transporters and a luxury bus bigger than his parents’ trailer house. The consummate blue collar hero, Force spent his first ten seasons living hand-to-mouth from one race to the next. He was 11 times a runner-up before winning for the first time in 1987. He’s been winning ever since.
Photo – NHRA
Courtney earned her NHRA competition drivers license in August of 2004 after graduating from Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School; entering her second season at the wheel of a 180-mile-an-hour Brand Source sponsored hybrid dragster.
Statuesque, like mother Laurie, Courtney Force is the youngest of drag racing champion John Force’s four daughters. She also is the offspring Force always believed was most likely to follow him into the family business. Yet, like sisters Brittany and Ashley, Courtney isn’t obsessive about driving a race car.
“Their mother has tried to give them balance in their lives, something I’ve never had,” Force said. “She tells them that there’s more to life than just racing. I tell them that if they want to be champions, they have to live racing, night and day.”
A former cheerleader at Esperanza High School in Yorba Linda, Calif., Courtney demonstrated that balance last October in Las Vegas, Nev., where, after qualifying first in her division on Saturday, she bypassed race day on Sunday to return to California for a school dance.
Like her sisters, Ashley and Brittany, Courtney’s professional racing aspirations will hinge upon her acquiring a college degree.