runner's up

Lorrie Falasca 

Her story: I was never a big John Force Fan, but all that changed in June of 1994 at the Pontiac Nationals in Columbus, Ohio.  It was Saturday afternoon and between qualifying rounds.  We were at Force's pit area observing the crew getting the car ready for the next qualifying round.  The body of the car was outside the tape around his pit area on jack stands while they worked and there was such a crowd there that we were behind it watching.  There was a young boy about 7 to 9 years old looking at the shell of the car, curiously he crawled under it to look out the windows and then popped up from under the shell of the car in front of a large man at the front of the crowd. 

The man suddenly started hitting on the boy yelling that he was cutting in line, finally knocking the boy down.  John Force was emerging from his trailer and saw the incident and had some of his crew grab the guy and called security and medical personnel.  He had his crew take the boy in his trailer for medical to look at him, when security arrived, he had the man arrested for hitting on the boy, and security hauled him away.  When medical was done with the boy, John Force shook his hand and then took off his ball cap, signed it and handed it to the boy.  The crowd erupted in applause and cheers.  Not long after that I found out what a supporter of children and children's charities John Force truly was.  Not only did I become a John Force fan that day, but he also earned my highest respect!!

Paul Songas

His story: This Story is from 1997 or 98, right after Tony Pedregon had run the Selena tribute body on his Castrol Syntec Mustang. We were out to dinner in Texas (Houston or Dallas don't remember) and no sooner then we sit down, good old John is at the next table putting on a show for his guests. It's getting louder and louder by the second, and then he starts with the next story going 100 MPH Force style.

"So.. Petra-gone was going to run this Selina body right, big ass picture of Selina on the hood... well... they get the thing done and it looks real good. Next thing you know, Medlen wants to run some new injector on the car, so they take the saws-all to the opening, and cut the damn top of Selinas head right off.. This ain't going to work.. They needed to re-do the decal and quick 'cause we needed to get the hell to the race.. So, great they get it done again, and this time they got her chin right over the body brace bracket, and it looks like she has the 4 biggest zits ever on her chin.. son-of-a-bitch we need to do this a 3rd time!!! So..off with that decal, and get another new one going, and we are in a rush... well they hurry up, get it done, but there were some air bubbles in it, so they said leave it in the sun for half hour, and it would flatten out. Well we go inside and have a drink, come back out, and the fu%%%ng black body soaked up the sun and got so hot, the damn decal split right down the middle.. it looked like one of those horror movies when someones head gets split in half top to bottom. Here we are, supposed to be running a tribute to this poor girl, and all we had done so far was cut the top of her head off and split it down the middle!!!!! We got it right the next time but what a disaster!!!"

By this time, the entire restaurant was listening and laughing their butts off.