John Force has lost count of the motorcycles in his Southern California garage, but he said he has four or five Harley-Davidsons and a Suzuki Hayabusa. Getting the National Hot Rod Association's most successful drag racer and Funny Car class icon to take a relaxing ride on one of them is another story.
 John Force completing one of his famous burn-outs |
Austin Coil, crew chief for his Castrol GTX Ford Mustang and dean of John Force Racing's brain trust, relishes the rare moment when he gets away from the daily grind on his bike. He has tried to coax Force to join him but to no avail. "I show up, ready to go, and he changes his mind. That's probably happened 20 times."
Finally, Force agreed to accompany him. "We kept stopping at signal lights and talking about the race car," Force said. "Then we finally got down the road a ways and said, 'Let's go back to the shop.' And we went back to work. It's what we do."
The scene wasn't exactly "Easy Rider" redux, but Force longs to be free of financial fear. Aside from cancer and "my kids getting hurt in a car wreck," one thing that frightens him is "going back to that trailer house I came from, because it makes me work seven days a week."
"If I lose, I'll be poor. He tells me that all the time," said Force’s wife, Laurie. I guess he has repeated it enough that he believes it." She has proof: a photo of her husband on vacation in Hawaii - with his cell phone at his ear.
"I need to work. That's what I love to do," Force said. "Everything I do has got to be a reason to grow. It ain't just to beat the competition. I've got so many things I want to do in my life and not enough time".
Hot Commodity: John Force
"If I have breakfast with my kids on Sunday morning, I am thinking how to get more money and how to win a race," Force said.
"I'm not like that,” Coil said. “That's why he's got all those zeroes in his bank account and I don't. He's always worried, and he's always working."
 The eyes tell all you need to know about his intensity |
Coil peppers his speech with the words "simple" and "reasonable." They seem out of place, though, in an environment where nothing is simple and Force's often-manic, always-intense personality hardly seems reasonable. That disturbs Coil, but he knows he's powerless to change it. "How much is enough?" he asked, then answered his own question. "A little more. To John, the next likely place is where you don't want to be."
Force asked him if he gets weary of the seven-days-a-week routine. "What are our options?" Coil asked. "It's the only life we know."
John Force can identify with Dennis Hopper's line in "Easy Rider" that freedom is what it's all about. But Jack Nicholson's character in the film better described Force's life: "That's what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace."
Bought and Sold . . . It sounds ruthless, but it's the reality of living in the stratosphere of NHRA drag racing: four seconds of heart-pounding, breathtaking, gut-quivering euphoria in the race car and a dizzying swirl of technology, media, celebrity, gossip, heartbreak, and triumph outside the car.
In the beginning, John Force begged to be bought and sold. Years ago, he exploited his nasty crash at Pomona, showing off his battered Funny Car for the crowd. "I paraded it back. It's all about showmanship," Force said. He brushed past teary-eyed, protective brother Walker and dove straight into media interviews. Nothing has changed in nearly 30 years.
In between, Force had a fiery accident at Memphis. But Mr. Entertainment scrambled out of the charred remains and declared, "I saw Elvis at 1,000 feet [downtrack]!" From then on, Force had a hunka-hunka burnin' stand-up schtik that has continued to amuse a new generation or two of fans.
"Face time," he calls it, this phenomenon of manipulation, this game of "How many times can I get Castrol and Ford extra exposure on TV?" He'll go to the starting line to watch various drivers make a pass, sometimes because he genuinely wants to see the run, but often, he admitted, he's playing a game with unsuspecting camera crews.
One Smart Cookie
Although he used to read his daughters' textbooks and lament that he should have paid more attention in school, Force is one smart cookie. He has observed, planned, listened to sound advice, and reinvented himself more than once.
The two smartest acts he committed, he said, were hiring Coil and co-crew chief Bernie Fedderly. Coil already had won two championships with Frank Hawley in the Chi-Town Hustler. "I knew he was good," Force said, "because the big teams had budget and he didn't. He was out there sanding on a piston. And my uncle who raced Funny Cars, Gene Beaver, and the Condit Brothers said to me, “You don't have hardly any money and neither does that guy. But we believe he's got the talent to build more championships, because he did it without money. And you've got the talent to find money, because you're the new generation."
Coil said he would bring his mechanical expertise but announced right away that "I don't travel in the truck. I don't wash, polish, lift, carry, push, tote, nothin'. That's what I do, and if you want to hire me for that, we can negotiate. If you don't, I'll just stay and run my own team." Truth is, Coil conceded, "I had my own team, and basically I went broke. So I don't know how to run that side of the business. I have no talent at all for the things John's best at. So it makes a good marriage, because we really need each other."
They also needed Bernie Fedderly, who said that Coil "is probably the brainiest of all the crew chiefs out here. He certainly ranks at the top of the pile."
Force considered hiring Fedderly, the engine expert from Edmonton, Alberta, another business coup. "I realized to be a winner, the crew chief's on overload and I needed some brainpower. Now everybody's got two crew chiefs. I didn't create the concept, but I was the first in 'the new generation' of multi-car teams. Nobody had 'em before me. They had 'em years ago - Jungle Jim, Raymond Beadle."
Force followed the marketing lead of Kenny Bernstein, whose Budweiser deal came from a balance of calculating and risk-taking. Force recalled "trying to work with the [Coca-Cola] bottlers, just trying to get millions of dollars from some big company who didn't have a clue who I was. Kenny did it with the beer company. And if I give credit to who opened that door - Kenny Bernstein opened that door in drag racing . . . bringing in Corporate America.
Coil, however, was the change said Force. "And it was four years later that I started winning and then championships, and it didn't quit until after last year.”
Never, either, does Force's Big Picture focus on one element, and he said his successful equation has a number of factors. "[Coil had] the talent, the ability to teach me and be an innovator." But he couldn't overlook his relationships with Castrol and Ford: "Castrol, for giving me my first real budget and then Ford, evolving us with the technology that Ford brought to the table.
"GM never gave me any technology. They threw us out there with 30 other guys and said, 'Do it.' And we all scrambled to beat each other, and that was the problem I had with GM. Now GM appears to be back in the game. I was loyal to GM. But when they owned all the cars, why did they care if you went to the wind tunnel? We started winning because I got the technology."
Force is proud of what he, too, introduced to drag racing. "The roof hatch was my invention," he said. "Caught on fire at Orange County. Burned to the ground. I couldn't get out the windows. I was trapped and almost died. I've been hoarse ever since, but the roof hatch was just an exit plan. Who had the first technology center? We did.
The State Of The Sport
Force sloughed off suggestions that NHRA is The House That Force Built. "Did John Force build this house? No. Was I one of the people? Yeah," he said. "I think that the Prudhommes, the Shirley Muldowneys, the Don Garlitses, Kenny Bernstein, we built this town, along with NHRA and a lot of great people [such as] the Safety Safari. I don't want any credit for that. I just come up with ideas and I like to do what I do. I build up on the drag racers' side."
But his vision isn't isolated. He has watched NASCAR and its explosive growth. "I believe that NASCAR has opened a lot of doors,” he said. “They're Big Brother and we're chasing them [in popularity, as the No. 2 form of motorsport in the U.S.], but they're so powerful they can demand. And that leaves a lot of deals on the table for NHRA drag racing. That's what I'm chasing right now. The 'woman' market they don't even want to tap. But I'm going after it," he said, referring to the emergence of daughters Ashley, Brittany, and Courtney to the driving scene. "That's one place I'm going to beat NASCAR.
"Understand something: Even without a sanctioning body, we have a great product," Force said. "No matter what the position is that they want to fill, this sport is open to women and men, young and old. So there's opportunities for driver, owner, crew chief, machine shop, technology, design work, marketing. There are so many opportunities," he said. "What I say is finish your education. I wish I had that. I would be so much better."
What's Next For Force?
Evolve is one of Force’s latest buzzwords. "I believe in evolution,” he said. “I believe Rome falls. Only a matter of time. Just like John Force will fall someday. But that's why I'm building 'The Next Generation' of kids. Robert [Hight, who's also his son-in-law] and Ashley - these people will replace me. I think the future is strong."
He has a contract with Castrol and Ford for five more years. When it expires, he said, "I'll be over 60. If I can do the job, I'm going to do it as long as my eyesight's good, my reaction's good, I keep my weight down, and all that. The bottom line: I try to do it for the next generation. So my retirement - there'll be no retirement."
"I believe I will die at the race track, whether it's old age or heart attack or get run over by a four-wheeler or in a car crash, because this is where I live most of my life," Force said. "Retirement's not an option. But in that transition from driver to owner, I'm going to have all these teams, with Robert Hight, my daughter Ashley, and hopefully Brittany and Courtney. Only time will tell."
Lights, Camera, Action!
Only in time will John Force know if being bought and sold was worth it. And every night, America is watching part of the transaction, with A&E's reality show "Driving Force."
 Daughter Ashley is now a success on the track & in the marketplace |
"I didn't want to do it," Force said of the program that peeks in on his private life and how he interacts with his wife and daughters. "I'm on overload. I have five corporations. I don't have any time. And there are so many things I need to do, to address, and to win this championship.
He caved in to the idea of the show because "the girls wanted it. I've been offered two or three reality shows. I ain't got time and I know what it takes. I did it because my kids wanted it, No. 1, and I saw some opportunities to grow sponsorships and to grow the sport. And that's why I went after it. For the sport, to help NHRA, to find sponsorship opportunities, to find endorsements in an untapped market. And somebody wanted to promote these girls. . . . We're talking with Castrol. We're talking with Nordstrom's, Maybelline, Macy's. William Morris and A&E are trying to keep control of where I go because it's better for them to sell the show than it is for them to have me sell it. Then they can't sell it again. At least if they sell it going in, they can get part of the money. And I thought it would bring my family closer together."
And has it? "Yes, it has," he said, although he told Laurie with one of his latest Force-isms, "It ain't like we're Ward and June Cleaver." He said the show isn't about racing. "You want to watch racing, turn on ESPN2. You'll watch a family. It ain't the Osbournes. It ain't the Osmonds from Salt Lake. We have our issues. I swear a lot, but I still love God. In the end, a message started being said."
He said the show was a bit of a mirror for him, as well. "I saw myself on TV, I thought, ' What jerk.' I saw the first show and I talked all these years to my kids - I didn't know I had that look on my face. I didn't know I was up on the tire. I never knew I swore so much. I need to clean up my act."
Don't Worry - He's Happy
Don't feel sorry for John Force. He isn't asking for pity. He simply is driven to be the best, the most prominent, the most powerful. The former long-haul trucker said that if he still were driving a big rig, he'd be president of the Teamsters by now. The man who overcame childhood polio, grew up in economic hardship, and raced 10 years before winning a single event, today wields considerable power in a number of industry boardrooms. And in that Castrol GTX Ford Mustang Funny Car, he literally can feel the power Ñ nearly 8,000 horsepower. He said knowing "the car's your best friend, to where you know the car's going to protect you . . . that's like the power of God."
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