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Hot News is all about top moments. Select press releases from the best representatives in motorsports sometimes read like a great book, except faster. It's a brief world any more so brevity is the norm. These fast words are hoped to be brief enough to fit the real world of limited reading time. The goal is always to bring the best to the worthy.
John Force Wins 1,000th Racing Round
FORCE BEATS CAPPS FOR HISTORIC 1,000TH ROUND WIN
One week after his daughter made Funny Car history with a breakthrough victory in Atlanta, Ga., John Force celebrated his 59th birthday Sunday by becoming the first driver to win 1,000 competitive rounds in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series.
When Force drove his Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Mustang to a quarter mile time of 4.862 seconds, 320.20 miles per hour to beat defending event champion Ron Capps in the first round of Sunday’s 12th annual O’Reilly Midwest Nationals, it propelled him to what may be his ultimate accomplishment in the sport.
NHRA officials suspended first round competition to bring Force back to the starting line area where he was congratulated by NHRA president Tom Compton and presented a crystal trophy commemorating his accomplishment.
“You can’t win without a good crew, sponsors like Castrol, Ford, the Auto Club and Old Spice and crew chiefs like Austin Coil and Bernie Fedderly,” Force said. “Five hundred races (a milestone he achieved at Atlanta) just means you showed up a lot. But winning a thousand rounds, that means that at a point in time, we were pretty good.”
JOHN FORCE WINS 1,000TH RACING ROUND!
(NOTE: John Force today became the first professional drag racer to win 1,000 competitive rounds in the NHRA’s primary series. Below is a statistical data package designed to provide some perspective on his accomplishment)
John Force’s historically significant round wins:
First win beat Tom McEwen, first round, Cajun Nationals, Baton Rouge, La., June 1, 1979
100th win beat Brad Tuttle, first round, NorthStar Nationals, Brainerd, Minn., Aug. 21, 1988, race winner,
Oldsmobile Firenza
200th win beat Mike Dunn, semifinals, Summernationals, Englishtown, N.J., July 7, 1991, semifinalist,
Oldsmobile Cutlass
250th win beat Del Worsham, semifinals, 1992 Mopar Mile-High Nationals, Denver, Colo. (Runner-up)
July 26, 1992, Oldsmobile Cutlass
300th win beat Gordie Bonin, semifinals, Mid-South Nationals, Memphis, Tenn., May 16, 1993, race
winner, Oldsmobile Cutlass
400th win beat Dale Pulde, second round, Northwest Nationals, Seattle, Wash., August 6, 1995, race winner, Pontiac Formula Firebird
500th win beat Ray Higley, second round, Castrol Nationals, Dallas, Texas, May 4, 1997, runner-up,
Ford Mustang
600th win beat Whit Bazemore, second round, Virginia is for Lovers Nationals, Richmond, Va., May 2,
1999, race winner, Ford Mustang
700th win beat Tim Wilkerson, first round, 1999 Auto Club Finals, Pomona, Calif., Nov. 14, 1999,
runner-up, Ford Mustang
750th win beat Bob Gilbertson, first round, 2001 Toyo Tires Nationals, Reading, Pa., Oct. 7, 2001, race
winner, Ford Mustang
800th win beat Tim Wilkerson, semifinals, ACDelco Las Vegas Nationals, Las Vegas, Nev., Oct. 27,
2002, race winner, Ford Mustang.
900th win beat Whit Bazemore, first round, Summit Southern Nationals, Atlanta, Ga., May 15,
2005, race winner, Ford Mustang.
1000th win beat Ron Capps, first round, O’Reilly Midwest Nationals, May 4, 2008, Ford Mustang.
The Next 10
Warren Johnson, Pro Stock ...846
*Bob Glidden, Pro Stock...597
*Kenny Bernstein, Top Fuel/Funny Car...681
Kurt Johnson, Pro Stock...473
Larry Dixon, Top Fuel...465
Jim Yates, Pro Stock...412
Tony Pedregon, Top Fuel/Funny Car...410
Cory Mac, Top Fuel...409
Tony Schumacher, Top Fuel...394
*Don Prudhomme, Top Fuel/Funny Car...389
*No longer racing
Did You Know?
– John has beaten 114 different drivers to achieve 1000 round wins
– John has won 180 rounds versus NHRA world champions
– John has won 61 rounds against JFR teammates
– John has won rounds at 24 different racetracks
– John has won rounds in 18 different states
– John has won 805 rounds in Steve Pleuger-built cars; 195 in Murf McKinney cars.
– John has won 21 rounds outside the U.S., all at Sanair Raceway, St. Pie, Quebec, Canada
– The most rounds John ever won in a single season was 65 (1996)
Ashley Force Makes History As First Female Funny Car Winner
Beats Dad in Storybook Final Round to Win Summit Southern Nationals
Ashley Force put a new face on Funny Car drag racing Sunday by becoming the first woman to win a national race in a category that once was considered the last bastion of male superiority.
The 25-year-old did so with a flair for the dramatic, beating her father, drag racing icon John Force, in the final round of the 28th annual Summit Racing Equipment Southern Nationals to deny him his 1,000 winning round in his 500th NHRA tour event.
The result enabled the second generation driver to pad her points lead and dispel any lingering doubts anyone may have harbored about either her commitment to the sport or her competence at the wheel of one of the world’s most powerful race cars.
Her first win came in her 27th pro race and in her fourth trip to the final round. Denied in the two most recent events in the POWERade Series, first on March 30 by Del Worsham at Houston, Texas, and then on April 13 by Tim Wilkerson at Las Vegas, Nev., Ashley left no doubt this time.
With her father in a left lane that was the bane of every racer during eliminations, she sprinted down the favored right lane in 4.837 seconds at 320.36 miles per hour. Her dad was never in it, losing traction almost at the hit of the throttle and slowing to 11.223 seconds.
It was her second career win against her father, drag racing’s biggest winner, who lost the first ever meeting between father and daughter in the first round of the 2007 Southern Nationals.
“There are a lot of mixed emotions,” John Force said before the final. “I turn off the switch. If I win, that’s great but if she wins, that’s something really special, too. I’m just going to go out there and let my car do what it does.”
For the champ, who had won seven times previously at Atlanta Dragway and was appearing in his 14th Southern Nationals final round, most at any event in the series, his car let him down for the first time all day.
Now, he’ll move on to Gateway International Raceway outside St. Louis where he’ll have another opportunity to reach 1,000 round win at next week’s O’Reilly Midwest Nationals.
“I guess the third time’s a charm,” said the woman who now leads the Funny Car point standings by 59 points. “We just knew that if we kept getting to the finals, we’d eventually get one. I kinda hated that it had to be against dad but I’m just happy to win an event.”
“We went a whole year last year and the biggest win I had was off the track (in AOL sports’ “world’s hottest athlete” poll),” joked the second year pro. “To finally get it done here in Atlanta, where I beat dad last year (in the first round in the first meeting between father and daughter), was special. He came over and he congratulated me. He told me, ‘good job.’ He told my team ‘good job.”
“I never saw him,” she said of her father, “and I never saw my win light, but they told me on the radio (that I had won) while I was coasting. I know he wanted his 1,000th win, but mom and I had it all figured out – he can just go do that next week (at the O’Reilly Midwest Nationals in St. Louis), on his (59th) birthday. That would be special.
“Antron (Top Fuel winner Antron Brown) and I are seeing a pattern here,” she continued. “When I saw him win in the semis, I suddenly got all kind of confidence because every final he’s been in (this year) I’ve been in, too. Not that that has anything to do with anything, but it’s little things like that where you feel a little bit more confident, like when we did our team dinner (on Thursday). Every race that we’ve done a team dinner, ever, we’ve gone to the final and now we’ve done it again.
“It’s an exciting time, you know, with Danica winning. There are a lot of women in a lot of different motor sports and we’re getting our practice, we’re getting our experience and we’re making our way toward those wins. It’s a good week for women and it’s exciting for the fans to finally have a woman winner in Funny Car, but I know that it’s the 10 guys on my team who got me to this point. I would never be here without them and without ‘Guido’ (crew chief Dean Antonelli) and Ron (assistant crew chief Ron Douglas). I’m proud to be a female in the seat but it’s those guys who got me here.”
The other two JFR Mustangs, both of them higher qualified than either of the Force’s Fords, were eliminated in the very first round.
Robert Hight’s streak of final round appearances ended with little fanfare in the very first round. That’s where the defending race champion was victimized by a loss of traction in the tricky left lane.
How the 2005 Rookie-of-the-Year wound up in the bad lane, though, was a story in itself. Actually, when his crew pulled the Auto Club Ford into the staging area, it was positioned on the preferred right side, as expected. However, crew chief Jimmy Prock’s concern about the condition of that lane after Del Worsham left an oil slick on his burnout, caused the team to swap lanes, which is the prerogative of the quicker car in each pair.
Unfortunately, after the cleanup by the NHRA Safety Safari crew, Capps zipped down the right lane without a problem in 4.875 seconds, third quickest time of the round, while Hight’s chassis unloaded when his car hit the bump and slowed to 5.975 seconds at 169.06 mph.
“Worsham oiled it in front of us,” Hight said, “(and) Bernie (Fedderly, crew chief on Force’s car) and Jimmy didn’t think that they had the track clean enough. So we had to deal with the bump in the left lane. The bump is pretty serious. You basically have to go up there set up for the bump. Obviously, you could navigate it because Ashley was able to. There wasn’t a lot of tire smoke in Funny Cars during qualifying but you look at today and there was. Guys were trying to press with the track conditions the way they were. You were trying to stay in the right lane.”
Although he refused to use it as an excuse, Hight acknowledged that his team was taken out of its routine because of several rain delays which delayed the start of the race by two-and-a-half hours.
Meanwhile, Mike Neff’s first round woes continued, this time against his boss and, perhaps because his crew, like Hight’s, opted to change from the right lane to the left. The result was almost a mirror image. The Old Spice Mustang lost traction at the bump, slowing to 7.179 while Force motored down the right side in 4.845 seconds, quickest time of the opening round.
“We’re disappointed,” Neff said. “It should have been a good drag race. We’re just upset with the way it all worked out after Worsham oiled the track. We went up there with lane choice, but they were skeptical as they watched them clean it up (so) we made the decision to follow Robert over there (to the left lane).
Patrick wins Indy Japan 300 By indyracing.com
Since exploding into the consciousness of an international audience at the 2005 Indianapolis 500, Danica Patrick has faced questions of when she would win an IndyCar Series race.
She answered with a flurry of a finish at Twin Ring Motegi, becoming the first female to win a major auto racing event. Patrick, who turned 26 three weeks ago, won in her 50th IndyCar Series start.
"Finally," Patrick said in victory lane. "This is a long time coming. It was a fuel strategy race, but my team called it perfectly for me. I know I was on the same strategy at Helio (Castroneves) and when I passed him for the lead, I couldn't believe it. This is fabulous."
Helio Castroneves, making his 100th IndyCar Series start, finished 5.8594 second behind and Scott Dixon was third. Dixon's Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, Dan Wheldon, finished fourth and Tony Kanaan was fifth.
With six laps remaining, Dixon had a 3.6-second lead over Dixon. But the leader had to pit for a splash of fuel on Lap 195. Wheldon and Kanaan had to follow suit on Lap 196. That left the door open for Patrick and Castroneves, whose last pit stop came on Lap 148.
Photo by Timothy L. Hale A.S., B.F.A.
Infinity Fotos @ www.infinityfotos.com
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