FUNNY CAR

Robert Hight and the Auto Club Ford Mustang raced into the record books extending a number of personal best streaks winning in a great all John Force Racing final round against teammate Mike Neff. In the final Hight’s Ford Mustang outran Neff’s Castrol GTX backed Mustang 4.139 seconds to 4.168 seconds, in the first all JFR final round at Firebird Raceway. Until today, no other JFR driver other than John Force had won at Phoenix and he had won eight times.

“I’ll be honest with you. We did not have a chance if Mike Neff was running like he was running all day. I am not sure what kind of a problem he had on that last run but Jimmy just made it go down the left lane. We picked it up a little from the round before,” said Hight. “We were having trouble out there because there was a little bump that just upset our car because that was right where we were giving it some clutch. I’ll be honest I would not have bet on a 4.13 beating Neff in the final.”

Hight has appeared in two previous finals at Firebird Raceway losing to Tony Pedregon in 2007 and then to Jack Beckman in 2008. This win was the 24th of Hight’s career in 38 final round appearances. He has won at least one race every year of his career. This is the 16th different tour event Robert has won and it’s the 14th different track on which he has won. In the last two rounds Hight was relegated to the trickier left lane.

“I have been to the final here a couple times but I never got the job done. This is big,” Hight said. “We had some runs going over there that could have run 4.07 but they weren’t good enough to run that. Those bumps (in the left lane) were just tricky. I had to pedal it second round. We slowed it down against Courtney (Force) in the semis and we got by her. It wasn’t a great run but we got by her to get into the final. Going into the final (crew chief) Jimmy (Prock) said he was going to pick it up a little more but he didn’t want to give it away. I honestly thought Neff in that right lane would run 4.07 or go low like he has been doing. That has been a tough, tough car.”

This was also the second straight week Neff has posted quick time 4.072 seconds and top speed 309.91 only to lose in the final. Last week at the O’Reilly NHRA Winternationals it was 4.036 seconds and 316.97. This is also the first time JFR has been 1-2-3 in points in the Funny Car standings.

This was the 37th all-JFR Funny Car final and this is just the third time that JFR drivers have opposed one another in consecutive final rounds.