Force Enters 500th Race
This week, when John Force rolls his Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Mustang onto the newly-resurfaced quarter mile track at Atlanta Dragway, he will be appearing in his 500th NHRA national event.
There's no doubt that 500 races is a milestone. However, if on Sunday Force should wind up in the winners' circle, as he has seven times previously at the Summit Racing Equipment Southern Nationals, he would become the first professional drag racer to win 1,000 racing rounds.
Tumble the numbers: two rounds won at EVERY race the 58-year-old icon has entered including those for which he didn't even qualify. To put it another way, Force, on average, has gone to the semifinals in EVERY event in which he has competed since making his debut in 1978.
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Even though he is trying to come back from the most serious crash of his 31-year pro career, Force already has won four more racing rounds this year than he had last year at this time. In 2007, he didn't win his first round until May 6 before rallying with three tour victories to qualify for the Countdown to the Championship.
For him, the quest for number 1,000 is not a priority. "If it happens, it happens when it happens," said the 14-time Auto Racing All-America selection. "What's more important right now is getting back to winning races for Castrol and Ford. That's our focus."
Force comes into Atlanta in eighth place in the POWERade standings behind both his daughter, Ashley, the only woman ever to sit atop the Funny Car driving standings, and Hight, the former trapshooting champion who is married to Force's oldest daughter, Adria, and is the only Funny Car driver to have led the points each of the last four years.
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